Dinner
“A huge provision was done to this dinner: the sound of cookbooks on the general's kitchen knives was audible even near the city gates.”
The author intentionally highlights the importance of this dinner for the plot of the story, its heroes. Actually this dinner plays the main role in the novel, it’s a kind of culmination here.
The other side of this phrase is as follows: the author wants to quip the values of people of that time, he shows how ludicrous these values are.
Mockery of the foolishness
“One landowner, who had served in the campaign of 1812, which had never taken place in, and then, having completely unknown reasons, took the cork out of the carafe and stuck it into a cake.”
The author highlights the irrationality of the hero’s actions, thereby hinting on his foolishness, and, probably, people around him, as well.
Soldiery
“These mustaches were seen everywhere.”
The author uses metonymy to show a huge role, place of soldiery, military in the society of that time. Moreover, the soldiers were taken to the author’s attention not as individuals, but more as the soldiers themselves. We see it, when we don’t find their names in the story or in the foregoing phrase, where only the mustaches, the informal attributes of the soldiers, are mentioned, but not people themselves.
