Rostopchín turns the prisoner Vereshchágin over to the mob to be brutally beaten and killed, although Vereshchágin was sentenced only to hard labor.
Rostopchín turns the prisoner Vereshchágin over to the mob to be brutally beaten and killed, although Vereshchágin was sentenced only to hard labor.
Book 11, Chapter 25
Rostopchín turns the prisoner Vereshchágin over to the mob to be brutally beaten and killed, although Vereshchágin was sentenced only to hard labor.
Summary:
Rostopchín now realizes the situation in Moscow is out of his control. When he is about to flee the city, a dangerous, angry mob has gathered outside his house. They are on the verge of violence, and Rostopchín sees that the mob wants a victim. He goes out and tells them This man, Vereshchágin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing. Then Rostopchín hands Vereshchágin over to the mob to be killed. Vereshchágin pleads to Rostopchín “One God is above us both…” but Rostopchín is unmoved. He watches the helpless young man being beaten to death. Then, Rostopchín slips away to his country estate. He momentarily feels guilt, but rationalizing that what he did was “for the good of the people”, Rostopchín becomes self-satisfied. His carriage passes a lunatic raving as though he was the Christ crucified. He later goes to see Kutúzov, but Kutúzov appears unconcerned with Rostopchín’s complaints and enigmatically gives him a nonsense answer.
quote from the chapter:
When they reached the Myasnítski Street and could no longer hear the shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his subordinates. The mob is terrible-disgusting, he said to himself in French. They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease. Count! One God is above us both!-Vereshchágin’s words suddenly recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchín smiled disdainfully at himself. I had other duties, thought he. The people had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing for the public good-and he began thinking of his social duties to his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself-not himself as Theodore Vasílyevich Rostopchín (he fancied that Theodore Vasílyevich Rostopchín was sacrificing himself for the public good) but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the Tsar. Had I been simply Theodore Vasílyevich my course of action would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my life and dignity as commander in chief.
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