The Scapegoat's Blood — War and Peace

Towards nine in the morning, as troops were already moving through Moscow, nobody came to Rostopchin for instructions. Those who could leave were going of their own accord. He ordered his carriage for Sokolniki and sat in his study, morose, sallow, and silent. In calm weather, Tolstoy writes, an administrator in a frail bark holds a boat hook to the ship of the people and imagines that his efforts move it. In a storm the ship moves by itself, the hook no longer reaches, and the ruler becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man. That feeling exasperated Rostopchin.

The superintendent of police, pale after being stopped by the crowd, reported an immense gathering in the courtyard. Rostopchin saw from the window the tall lad flourishing his arm and the bloodstained smith beside him. He wanted a victim because he himself wanted something on which to vent his rage. Told that Vereshchagin was waiting at the porch, he went onto the balcony, thanked the people for coming, and promised to settle with the villain who had caused the ruin of Moscow. A young man in chains, in a threadbare fox-lined coat and convict trousers, was placed on the bottom step: long thin neck, half-shaven head, submissive hands. Rostopchin named him the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow was perishing, a traitor who had gone over to Bonaparte. Vereshchagin raised his head, flushed, smiled sadly at the crowd, and looked for the count's eye. Rostopchin would not meet it. He handed the man over, then, as the crowd only pressed closer, shouted to cut him down. Vereshchagin's timid voice said that one God was above them both. A dragoon struck him on the head with the blunt side of a sabre. The cry of pain broke the last restraint. The tall youth seized his neck and went down with him. The mob beat, tore, and trampled for a long time before the body lay in a death rattle, the thin neck half severed. Then the same voices called the people wild beasts. Dragoons dragged the corpse away by the legs.

Rostopchin turned pale, lost his way in the passages, and fled in his caleche towards Sokolniki. Once the shouts faded he comforted himself in French: the mob were wolves, he had had other duties, the public welfare required a victim. He told himself Vereshchagin had been condemned to death, though the Senate had only given hard labour, and that he had punished a traitor and appeased the crowd at once. Across Sokolniki field a released lunatic in a dressing gown ran beside the carriage, crying that they had slain him thrice and that he would rise. Rostopchin went as pale as at the lynching and ordered the coachman faster, still seeing the bloodstained face in the fur-lined coat and hearing his own command. At the Yauza bridge, crowded and hot, he found Kutuzov on a bench and reproached him in French for abandoning Moscow after promising another battle. Kutuzov looked at him as if reading something on his face, shook his head, and muttered that he would not give up Moscow without a battle. Rostopchin made no reply. The proud Governor of Moscow took a Cossack whip and went to the bridge to shout the blocking carts forward.