we have to accept battle?” remarked Prince Andréy.
“We shall if everybody wants it; it can’t be helped. … But believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time , they will do it all. But the advisers n’entendent pas de cette oreille, voilà le mal . Some want a thing—others don’t. What’s one to do?” he asked, evidently expecting an answer. “Well, what do you want us to do?” he repeated and his eye shone with a deep, shrewd look. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he continued, as Prince Andréy still did not reply: “I will tell you what to do, and what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher ,” he paused, “ abstiens-toi ” —he articulated the French proverb deliberately.
“Well, goodbye, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor a prince, nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything come straight to me. Goodbye, my dear boy.”
Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andréy, but before the latter had left the room Kutúzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.
Prince Andréy could not have explained how or why it was, but after that interview with Kutúzov he went back to his regiment reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in that old man—in whom there seemed to remain only the habit of passions, and in place of an