"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each deliberately spoken word.

It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened with pleasure to his own voice.

" All I can say, General, is that if the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago.

I should long ago have joined the archduke.

And believe me on my honour that to me personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful general--of whom Austria has so many--and to lay down all this heavy responsibility.