sacred city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its
innumerable churches shaped like Chinese pagodas."

"Well?" asked Napoleon.

"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up with
the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in chief. He
is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."

Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and bring the
man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several adjutants galloped
off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov had handed over
to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's jacket and on a French
cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face. Napoleon told him to ride
by his side and began questioning him.

"You are a Cossack?"

"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."

"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's plain
appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental mind
the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the
incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In
reality Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master
dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of
chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him prisoner.
Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who have seen all
sorts of things, consider it necessary to do everything in a mean and
cunning way, are ready to render any sort of service to their master,
and are keen at guessing their master's baser impulses, especially those
prompted by vanity and pettiness.

Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had easily
and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed but merely
did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.

He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence could
no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with the
rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant major
or Napoleon could deprive him of.

So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the
orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the
Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed up
his eyes and considered.

In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see cunning
in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.

"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon, yours
wil