Page 1300 - war-and-peace

oved close to the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began
reading. Only now in the stillness of the night, reading it by
the faint light under the green shade, did he grasp its mean-
ing for a moment.
‘The French at Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may be
at Smolensk; perhaps are already there! Tikhon!’ Tikhon
jumped up. ‘No, no, I don’t want anything!’ he shouted.
He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his
eyes. And there rose before him the Danube at bright noon-
day: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself a young general
without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and alert, en-
tering Potemkin’s gaily colored tent, and a burning sense of
jealousy of ‘the favorite’ agitated him now as strongly as it
had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that first
meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump,
rather sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress
Mother, with her smile and her words at her first gracious
reception of him, and then that same face on the catafalque,
and the encounter he had with Zubov over her coffin about
his right to kiss her hand.
‘Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have
done with all the present! Quicker, quickerand that they
should leave me in peace!’

1300 War and Peace