hy, when
we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick or a wisp
of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would get it all;
wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin turned to the prince.
"But we daren't. In our regiment two officers were court-martialed for
that kind of thing. But when his Serenity took command everything became
straight forward. Now we see light..."

"Then why was it forbidden?"

Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to answer
such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.

"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the
enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound:
one can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to
marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might
outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand
this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him
involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first time,
we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit in the
men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the French for
two days, and that that success had increased our strength tenfold. He
ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and losses went for nothing.
He had no thought of betraying us, he tried to do the best he could,
he thought out everything, and that is why he is unsuitable. He is
unsuitable now, just because he plans out everything very thoroughly and
accurately as every German has to. How can I explain?... Well, say your
father has a German valet, and he is a splendid valet and satisfies your
father's requirements better than you could, then it's all right to let
him serve. But if your father is mortally sick you'll send the valet
away and attend to your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands,
and will soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could.
So it has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could
serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in danger
she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been making him
out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the only result will
be that afterwards, ashamed of their false accusations, they will make
him out a hero or a genius instead of a traitor, and that will be still
more unjust. He is an honest and very punctilious German