Folk-Tales of Napoleon | Page 7

replied Napoleonder; "a man can't live without a
soul."
"There! you see!" said the soldier. "You have a soul, and you believe in
God. How, then, can you say you don't know any such thing as pity?
You do know! And I believe that at this very moment, deep down in
your heart, you are mortally sorry for me; only you don't want to show
it. Why, then, did you kill me?"
Napoleonder suddenly became furious. "May the pip seize your tongue,
you miscreant! I'll show you how much pity I have for you!" And,

drawing a pistol, Napoleonder shot the wounded soldier through the
head. Then, turning to his dead men, he said: "Did you see that?"
"We saw it," they replied; "and as long as it is so, we are your faithful
servants always."
Napoleonder rode on.
At last night comes; and Napoleonder is sitting alone in his golden tent.
His mind is troubled, and he can't understand what it is that seems to be
gnawing at his heart. For years he has been at war, and this is the first
time such a thing has happened. Never before has his soul been so
filled with unrest. And to-morrow morning he must begin another
battle--the last terrible fight with the Tsar Alexander the Blessed, on the
field of Borodino.
"Akh!" he thinks, "I'll show them to-morrow what a leader I am! I'll lift
the soldiers of the Tsar into the air on my lances and trample their
bodies under the feet of my horses. I'll make the Tsar himself a prisoner,
and I'll kill or scatter the whole Russian people."
But a voice seemed to whisper in his ear: "And why? Why?"
"I know that trick," he thought. "It's that same wounded soldier again.
All right. I won't give in to him. 'Why? Why?' As if I knew why!
Perhaps if I knew why I shouldn't make war."
He lay down on his bed; but hardly had he closed his eyes when he saw
by his bedside the wounded soldier--young, fair-faced, blond-haired,
with just the first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead was pale,
his lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there
was a round black hole made by the bullet from
his--Napoleonder's--pistol. And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again,
"Why did you kill me?"
Napoleonder turns over and over, from side to side, in his bed. He sees
that it's a bad business. He can't get rid of that soldier. And, more than
all, he wonders at himself. "What an extraordinary occurrence!" he
thinks. "I've killed millions of people, of all countries and nations,
without the least misgiving; and now, suddenly, one miserable soldier
comes and throws all my ideas into a tangle!"
Finally Napoleonder got up; but the confinement of his golden tent
seemed oppressive. He went out into the open air, mounted his horse,
and rode away to the place where he had shot to death the vexatious
soldier.

"I've heard," he said to himself, "that when a dead man appears in a
vision, it is necessary to sprinkle earth on the eyes of the corpse; then
he'll lie quiet."
Napoleonder rides on. The moon is shining brightly, and the bodies of
the dead are lying on the battle-field in heaps. Everywhere he sees
corruption and smells corruption.
"And all these," he thought, "I have killed."
And, wonderful to say, it seems to him as if all the dead men have the
same face,--a young face with blue eyes, and blond hair, and the faint
shadow of a mustache,--and they all seem to be looking at him with
kindly, pitying eyes, and their bloodless lips move just a little as they
ask, without anger or reproach, "Why? Why?"
Napoleonder felt a dull, heavy pressure at his heart. He had not spirit
enough left to go to the little mound where the body of the dead soldier
lay, so he turned his horse and rode back to his tent; and every corpse
that he passed seemed to say, "Why? Why?"
He no longer felt the desire to ride at a gallop over the dead bodies of
the Russian soldiers. On the contrary, he picked his way among them
carefully, riding respectfully around the remains of every man who had
died with honor on that field of blood; and now and then he even
crossed himself and said: "Akh, that one ought to have lived! What a
fine fellow that one was! He must have fought with splendid courage.
And I killed him--why?"
The great conqueror never noticed that his heart was growing softer and
warmer, but so it was. He pitied his dead enemies at last, and then the
evil spirit went away from him, and left him in