And you'll live just so long as he has patience with you, and no longer."
"I know that as well as you do," said Napoleonder.
"Well, then," replied the soldier, "if you know it, why don't you reckon with God?"
Napoleonder scowled. "Don't say such things to me!" he cried. "I've heard that sanctimonious stuff before. It's of no use. You can't fool me! I don't know any such thing as pity."
"Indeed," said the soldier, "is it so? Have a care, Napoleonder! You are swaggering too much. You lie when you say a man can live without pity. To have a soul, and to feel compassion, are one and the same thing. You have a soul, haven't you?"
"Of course I have," 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 all respects like other people.