to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the
contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give
dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word he
spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov to be
animated by the same desire.

Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle penetrating
smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."

Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part of the
army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became extraordinarily slack
and physically feeble during his stay in that town. He attended to army
affairs reluctantly, left everything to his generals, and while awaiting
the Emperor's arrival led a dissipated life.

Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite--Count
Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the Emperor reached
Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove straight to
the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred generals and staff
officers in full parade uniform stood in front of the castle, as well as
a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.

A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with three
foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed into the
vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall porter's little
lodge.

A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress uniform,
his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his stomach,
waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its peaks to the
sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking with an effort
sideways down the steps to the level of the street, took in his hand the
report he had prepared for the Emperor.

There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka flew
furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh
in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be
descried.

From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating effect
on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all over,
readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up and,
at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the sleigh,
lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began speaking in his
smooth, ingratiating voice.

The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,
frowned for an instant, but immediat