ce.
The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor to you
forever."

He paused and looked around.

"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had accidentally
lowered the French eagle he was holding before the Preobrazhensk
standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he added, addressing
the men with a rapid movement of his chin.

"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.

While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his saddle
and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and apparently ironic
gleam.

"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all at
once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer
the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who wanted to
tell his comrades something very important.

There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of the
soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was going to
say.

"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be helped!
Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors off and then
we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is hard for you, but
still you are at home while they--you see what they have come to," said
he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off than our poorest beggars.
While they were strong we didn't spare ourselves, but now we may even
pity them. They are human beings too. Isn't it so, lads?"

He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze fixed
upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew brighter
and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the corners of his
lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased speaking and bowed
his head as if in perplexity.

"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody
bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.

And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first time
during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the soldiers
laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"

Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could have
repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then changing
into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty sincerity of that
speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined with pity for the foe
and consciousness of the justice of our cause, exactly expressed by that
old man's good-natured expletives,