Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, immense numbers of carriages stand outside the Sloboda Palace. The great halls are full: nobility and gentry in uniforms in the first, bearded merchants in blue full-skirted coats and medals in the second. Magnates sit under the Emperor's portrait. Most of the gentry stroll. Pierre meets the same Club faces in uniforms of Catherine, Paul, or Alexander, and the general fact of uniform makes familiar people strange. Old men sit silent or attach themselves to someone younger. On all faces, as on the Kremlin crowd Petya saw, solemn expectation contradicts everyday talk of boston, Peter the cook, and Zinaida Dmitrievna's health.
Pierre is buttoned since morning in a nobleman's uniform that has grown too tight. The gathering of nobles and merchants, les etats generaux, revives thoughts of the Contrat Social and the French Revolution. The Emperor's word that he comes for consultation strengthens the idea. He strolls watching, finding no confirmation. The manifesto is read with enthusiasm. Then talk turns to where marshals of the nobility should stand, when a ball should be given, whether to group by districts. As soon as war or the purpose of the meeting is touched, the talk becomes indefinite. All prefer listening.
A retired naval officer in a sonorous baritone, swallowing his r's, mocks the Smolensk militia as a pattern, recalls 1807 enriching priests' sons and thieves, and says another conscription is better. Count Ilya Rostov, in a Catherine uniform, nods approval at whatever he last heard. Pierre wants to speak. A toothless senator interrupts: they are summoned to reply to the appeal, not to debate conscription versus militia. Pierre steps forward, lapses into French and bookish Russian, and says the nobility have been summoned not merely for sympathy but to consider means, not only to offer serfs and chair a canon but counsel. He wants the Emperor asked, most respectfully, for the number and position of the troops.
He is attacked from three sides. Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin, a boston player always well disposed, now malevolent in uniform, shouts that they have no right to question the Emperor and that troop numbers change with the enemy. A bad cardplayer Pierre met at the gypsies' smites his breast: war in Russia, tombs desecrated, all will arise for the Tsar. Pierre cannot get in a word. His attempt is forgotten. The crowd needs a tangible object to love and to hate, and Pierre becomes the latter. He is pushed aside as a common enemy. Glinka, editor of the Russian Messenger, cries that hell must be repulsed by hell. Magnates at the big table look hot. Pierre still tries to say sacrifices have more purpose when one knows what is needed. Someone shouts that Moscow will be surrendered as expiation. Another calls someone the enemy of mankind. Gentlemen, you are crushing me.
Coming Up in Chapter 190
At that moment Count Rostopchin, with his protruding chin and alert eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with a sash over his shoulder, enters the room and steps briskly to the front of the crowd of gentry. He tells them he is straight from the palace and the Emperor is coming.
