'a boy happily in love'

empolgadíssima no meio da batalha de Austerlitz, o nevoeiro no vale, Napoleão no alto solar de uma colina, no aniversário da sua coroação, as forças russas e austríacas a correr cegamente para o vale enevoado, pensando que o inimigo está a grande distância; o café é invadido por uma força de bmw's e de mercedes, quase me bloqueiam, um momento de anti-exaltação, depois da corrida de Andrei com o estandarte russo. o nevoeiro e a descrição genial da batalha, páginas absolutamente inesquecíveis na história da literatura, fizeram-me pensar que tínhamos porventura direito a elas também, houvesse alguém pegado em Alcácer Quibir, ou batalha dos três reis (batalha dos três imperadores, Austerlitz), como Tolstoi pegou nesta derrota russa e a transformou, um pouco, em martírio de valor e coragem. D. Sebastião lutava contra o Sultão de Marrocos, que tinha o apoio otomano. pensava eu que os otomanos não tinham tido influência gigantesca no curso dos nossos eventos, claro que me enganava. a descrição de Tolstoi do grupo de jovens que rodeavam o Csar é traduzida em português para a expressão repetida de livro de história em livro de história, a 'nata da nobreza portuguesa'.

e um retrato, à Tolstoi, mestre da pintura:

It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist. The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff, were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the valley. Not a single muscle of his face—which in those days was still thin—moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still he did not begin the engagement.

Today was a great day for him—the anniversary of his coronation. Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident, self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily in love.

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