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Napoleonder
by
“I’ve heard,” he said to himself, “that when a dead man appears in a vision, it is necessary to sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse; then he’ll lie quiet.”
Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining brightly, and the bodies of the dead are lying on the battle-field in heaps. Everywhere he sees corruption and smells corruption.
“And all these,” he thought, “I have killed.”
And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all the dead men have the same face,–a young face with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint shadow of a mustache,–and they all seem to be looking at him with kindly, pitying eyes, and their bloodless lips move just a little as they ask, without anger or reproach, “Why? Why?”
Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his heart. He had not spirit enough left to go to the little mound where the body of the dead soldier lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his tent; and every corpse that he passed seemed to say, “Why? Why?”
He no longer felt the desire to ride at a gallop over the dead bodies of the Russian soldiers. On the contrary, he picked his way among them carefully, riding respectfully around the remains of every man who had died with honor on that field of blood; and now and then he even crossed himself and said: “Akh, that one ought to have lived! What a fine fellow that one was! He must have fought with splendid courage. And I killed him–why?”
The great conqueror never noticed that his heart was growing softer and warmer, but so it was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and then the evil spirit went away from him, and left him in all respects like other people.
The next day came the battle. Napoleonder led his forces, cloud upon cloud, to the field of Borodino; but he was shaking as if in a chill. His generals and field-marshals looked at him and were filled with dismay.
“You ought to take a drink of vodka, Napoleonder,” they say; “you don’t look like yourself.”
When the Russian troops attacked the hordes of Napoleonder, on the field of Borodino, the soldiers of the great conqueror at once gave way.
“It’s a bad business, Napoleonder,” the generals and field-marshals say. “For some reason the Russians are fighting harder to-day than ever. You’d better call out your dead men.”
Napoleonder shouted at the top of his voice, “Bonaparty!”–six hundred and sixty-six,–the number of the Beast. But, cry as he would, he only frightened the jackdaws. The dead men didn’t come out of their graves, nor answer his call. And Napoleonder was left on the field of Borodino alone. All his generals and field-marshals had fled, and he sat there alone on his horse, shouting, “Bonaparty! Bonaparty!”
Then suddenly there appeared beside him the smooth-faced, blue-eyed, fair-haired Russian recruit whom he had killed the day before. And the young soldier said: “It’s useless to shout, Napoleonder. Nobody will come. Yesterday you felt sorry for me and for my dead brothers, and because of your pity your corpse-soldiers no longer come at your call. Your power over them is gone.”
Then Napoleonder began to weep and sob, and cried out, “You have ruined me, you wretched, miserable soldier!”
But the soldier (who was Ivan-angel, and not a soldier at all) replied: “I have not ruined you, Napoleonder; I have saved you. If you had gone on in your merciless, pitiless course, there would have been no forgiveness for you, either in this life or in the life to come. Now God has given you time for repentance. In this world you shall be punished; but there, beyond, if you repent of your sins, you shall be forgiven.”
And the angel vanished.
Then our Don Cossacks fell on Napoleonder, dragged him from his horse, and took him to Alexander the Blessed. Some said, “Napoleonder ought to be shot!” Others cried, “Send him to Siberia to!” But the Lord God softened the heart of Alexander the Blessed, and the merciful Tsar would not allow Napoleonder to be shot or sent to Siberia. He ordered that the great conqueror be put into an iron cage, and be carried around and exhibited to the people at country fairs. So Napoleonder was carried from one fair to another for a period of thirty summers and three years–until he had grown quite old. Then, when he was an old man, they sent him to the island of Buan to watch geese.