and men have killed one another no one has ever committed
such a crime against his fellow man without comforting himself with
this same idea. This idea is le bien public, the hypothetical welfare of
other people.

To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he
who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies. And
Rostopchin now knew it.

Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but
he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully
contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a
criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.

"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought Rostopchin
(though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to hard labor), "he
was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go unpunished and so I have
killed two birds with one stone: to appease the mob I gave them a victim
and at the same time punished a miscreant."

Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about domestic
arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.

Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the
Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but considering
what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where he had heard
that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing the angry and
stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for his deception. He
would make that foxy old courtier feel that the responsibility for all
the calamities that would follow the abandonment of the city and the
ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded it) would fall upon his doting
old head. Planning beforehand what he would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin
turned angrily in his caleche and gazed sternly from side to side.

The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of the
almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in white
and others like them walking singly across the field shouting and
gesticulating.

One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's
carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons
looked with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and
especially at the one running toward them.

Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering
dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on
Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs