“Well, Mikháil Ivánovich, our Buonaparte will be having a bad time of it. Prince Andréy” (he always spoke thus of his son) “has been telling me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I never thought much of him.”
Mikháil Ivánovich did not at all know when “you and I” had said such things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a peg on which to hang the prince’s favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.
“He is a great tactician!” said the prince to his son, pointing to the architect.
And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the A.B.C. of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any Potëmkins or Suvórovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andréy gaily bore with his father’s ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to him with evident pleasure.
“The past always seems good,” said he, “but did not Suvórov himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know how to escape?”
“Who told you that? Who?” cried the prince. “Suvórov!” And he jerked away his plate, which Tíkhon briskly caught. “Suvórov! … Consider, Prince Andréy. Two … Frederick and Suvórov; Moreau! …