We are in Volume III, Part One, Chapter V.Again, more Paynes Gray. This has the feeling of a smoky battlefield.
Tolstoy is describing one of Napoleon's marshalls. "In the mechanism of the state organism these people are necessary, as wolves are necessary in nature's organism, and they always exist, always appear and hold out, however incongruous their presence and closeness to the head of the government may be."
He goes on, "...Davout was one of those people who deliberately set themselves up in the most gloomy conditions of life, so as to have the right to be gloomy. For the same reason they are always in a hurry and stubbornly busy."
Tolstoy was part historian and part psychologist. -- Lola
Lola Baltzell
from page 21-22 of original text
collage, acrylic paint
made 2/11/11
page 616-617 Pevear/Volokhonsky translation
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