“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone in the country.”
“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
“Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be afraid.”
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have....”
“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew. “You had better go.”
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no pity for me. Why is it?”
“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave like that six months ago?”
“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because.... I assure you I myself have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here.... No, don’t distress yourself.... Good-by!”
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without restraining her angry tears.
“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at her husband’s face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
“Good night, Lise,” said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand as he would have done to a stranger.
CHAPTER VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, going to the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk—as one who has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak out.
“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the good?...” and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrew, “is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this, because I like you.”
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkónski who had lolled in Anna Pávlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid irritation.
“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but it is the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” said he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), “but Bonaparte when he worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,” continued Prince Andrew, “and at Anna Pávlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women.... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that’s what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t marry!” concluded Prince Andrew.
“It seems funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you, you should consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have everything before you, everything. And you....”
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
“How can he talk like that?” thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at Prince Andrew’s calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrew’s lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels that they may run smoothly.
“My part is played out,” said Prince Andrew. “What’s the use of talking about me? Let us talk about you,” he added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.
“But what is there to say about me?” said Pierre, his face relaxing into a careless, merry smile. “What am I? An illegitimate son!” He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say this. “Without a name and without means... And it really...” But he did not say what “it really” was. “For the present I am free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least idea what I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.”
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance—friendly and affectionate as it was—expressed a sense of his own superiority.
“I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what you will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting those Kurágins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly—all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!”
“What would you have, my dear fellow?” answered Pierre, shrugging his shoulders. “Women, my dear fellow; women!”
“I don’t understand it,” replied Prince Andrew. “Women who are comme il faut, that’s a different matter; but the Kurágins’ set of women, ‘women and wine’ I don’t understand!”
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasíli Kurágin’s and sharing the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew’s sister.
“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought, “seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly about anything. One’s head aches, and one spends all one’s money. He asked me for tonight, but I won’t go.”
“You give me your word of honor not to go?”
“On my honor!”
CHAPTER IX
It was past one o’clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole Kurágin was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
“I should like to go to Kurágin’s,” thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account, because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to come to his gathering; “besides,” thought he, “all such ‘words of honor’ are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all the same!” Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kurágin’s.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks, in which Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and trying to set him at the others.
“I bet a hundred on Stevens!” shouted one.
“Mind, no holding on!” cried another.
“I bet on Dólokhov!” cried a third. “Kurágin, you part our hands.”
“There, leave Bruin alone; here’s a bet on.”
“At one draught, or he loses!” shouted a fourth.
“Jacob, bring a bottle!” shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in front. “Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here is Pétya! Good man!” cried he, addressing Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes, particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring, cried from the window: “Come here; part the bets!” This was Dólokhov, an officer of the Semënov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.
“I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”
“Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,” said Anatole, and taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
“First of all you must drink!”
Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while explaining that Dólokhov was betting with Stevens, an English naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.
“Go on, you must drink it all,” said Anatole, giving Pierre the last glass, “or I won’t let you go!”
“No, I won’t,” said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to the window.
Dólokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to Anatole and Pierre.
Dólokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face. Dólokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dólokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dólokhov could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank, he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kurágin and Dólokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions and shouts of the gentlemen around.
Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but could not move it. He smashed a pane.
“You have a try, Hercules,” said he, turning to Pierre.
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out with a crash.
“Take it right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dólokhov.
“Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.
“First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dólokhov, who with a bottle of rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
Dólokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window sill. “Listen!” cried he, standing there and addressing those in the room. All were silent.
“I bet fifty imperials”—he spoke French that the Englishman might understand him, but he did not speak it very well—“I bet fifty imperials ... or do you wish to make it a hundred?” added he, addressing the Englishman.
“No, fifty,” replied the latter.
“All right. Fifty imperials ... that I will drink a whole bottle of rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this spot” (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window) “and without holding on to anything. Is that right?”
“Quite right,” said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons of his coat and looking down at him—the Englishman was short—began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.
“Wait!” cried Dólokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to attract attention. “Wait a bit, Kurágin. Listen! If anyone else does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?”
The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating Dólokhov’s words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window sill, leaned over, and looked down.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of the pavement.
“Shut up!” cried Dólokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily, Dólokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was already quite light. Dólokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dólokhov’s shirt.
“I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,” said this more sensible man.
Anatole stopped him.
“Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he’ll be killed. Eh?... What then?... Eh?”
Dólokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged himself on his seat.
“If anyone comes meddling again,” said he, emitting the words separately through his thin compressed lips, “I will throw him down there. Now then!”
Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the window and from Dólokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dólokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting yet further back. “Why is it so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dólokhov made a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he would never open them again. Suddenly he was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dólokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
“It’s empty.”
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dólokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
“Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil take you!” came from different sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money. Dólokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window sill.
“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!” he suddenly cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a bottle!”
“Let him do it, let him do it,” said Dólokhov, smiling.
“What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go giddy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.
“I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the window.
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who touched him was sent flying.
“No, you’ll never manage him that way,” said Anatole. “Wait a bit and I’ll get round him.... Listen! I’ll take your bet tomorrow, but now we are all going to ——’s.”
“Come on then,” cried Pierre. “Come on!... And we’ll take Bruin with us.”
And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground, and began dancing round the room with it.
CHAPTER X
Prince Vasíli kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskáya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Borís on the evening of Anna Pávlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an exception made, and Borís transferred into the regiment of Semënov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to Kutúzov’s staff despite all Anna Mikháylovna’s endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pávlovna’s reception Anna Mikháylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the Rostóvs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where her darling Bóry, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August, and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivílov.
It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostóvs—the mother and the youngest daughter—both named Nataly. Ever since the morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostóva’s big house on the Povarskáya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing room with the visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in relays.
The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing—she had had twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikháylovna Drubetskáya, who as a member of the household was also seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher,” or “ma chère”—he called everyone without exception and without the slightest variation in his tone, “my dear,” whether they were above or below him in rank—“I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended, ma chère! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come, mon cher!” These words he repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would call Dmítri Vasílevich, a man of good family and the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table would say: “Well, Dmítri, you’ll see that things are all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is the serving, that’s it.” And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.
“Márya Lvóvna Karágina and her daughter!” announced the countess’ gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.
“I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see her and no more. She is so affected. Ask her in,” she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if saying: “Very well, finish me off.”
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
“Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child ... at the Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... I was so delighted...” came the sounds of animated feminine voices, interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses and say, “I am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess Apráksina...” and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of Catherine’s day, Count Bezúkhov, and about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pávlovna’s reception.
“I am so sorry for the poor count,” said the visitor. “He is in such bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill him!”
“What is that?” asked the countess as if she did not know what the visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of Count Bezúkhov’s distress some fifteen times.
“That’s what comes of a modern education,” exclaimed the visitor. “It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible things that he has been expelled by the police.”
“You don’t say so!” replied the countess.
“He chose his friends badly,” interposed Anna Mikháylovna. “Prince Vasíli’s son, he, and a certain Dólokhov have, it is said, been up to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dólokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezúkhov’s son sent back to Moscow. Anatole Kurágin’s father managed somehow to get his son’s affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg.”
“But what have they been up to?” asked the countess.
“They are regular brigands, especially Dólokhov,” replied the visitor. “He is a son of Márya Ivánovna Dólokhova, such a worthy woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!”
“What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!” shouted the count, dying with laughter.
“Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?”
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
“It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,” continued the visitor. “And to think it is Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov’s son who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have my daughters to consider.”
“Why do you say this young man is so rich?” asked the countess, turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention. “His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate.”
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
“I should think he has a score of them.”
Princess Anna Mikháylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in society.
“The fact of the matter is,” said she significantly, and also in a half whisper, “everyone knows Count Cyril’s reputation.... He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.”
“How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!” remarked the countess. “I have never seen a handsomer man.”
“He is very much altered now,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “Well, as I was saying, Prince Vasíli is the next heir through his wife, but the count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death—and he is so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from Petersburg—no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasíli. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasíli told me himself. Besides, Cyril Vladímirovich is my mother’s second cousin. He’s also my Bóry’s godfather,” she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the fact.
“Prince Vasíli arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some inspection business,” remarked the visitor.
“Yes, but between ourselves,” said the princess, “that is a pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladímirovich, hearing how ill he is.”
“But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,” said the count; and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. “I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!”
And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. “So do come and dine with us!” he said.
CHAPTER XI
Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably, but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they now rose and took their leave. The visitor’s daughter was already smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.
The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
“Ah, here she is!” he exclaimed laughing. “My pet, whose name day it is. My dear pet!”
“Ma chère, there is a time for everything,” said the countess with feigned severity. “You spoil her, Ilyá,” she added, turning to her husband.
“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name day,” said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added, addressing the mother.
This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers—was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla—not paying the least attention to her severe remark—and began to laugh. She laughed, and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she produced from the folds of her frock.
“Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...” was all Natásha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.
“Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,” said the mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the visitor she added: “She is my youngest girl.”
Natásha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s mantilla, glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it necessary to take some part in it.
“Tell me, my dear,” said she to Natásha, “is Mimi a relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?”
Natásha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Borís, the officer, Anna Mikháylovna’s son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count’s eldest son; Sónya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece, and little Pétya, his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apráksina. Now and then they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Borís was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say, but failed. Borís on the contrary at once found his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had known that doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he glanced at Natásha. She turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Borís did not laugh.
“You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do you want the carriage?” he asked his mother with a smile.
“Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,” she answered, returning his smile.
Borís quietly left the room and went in search of Natásha. The plump boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been disturbed.
CHAPTER XII
The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the young lady visitor and the countess’ eldest daughter (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sónya, the niece. Sónya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natásha and Borís, escape from the drawing room.
“Ah yes, my dear,” said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing to Nicholas, “his friend Borís has become an officer, and so for friendship’s sake he is leaving the university and me, his old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn’t that friendship?” remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
“But they say that war has been declared,” replied the visitor.
“They’ve been saying so a long while,” said the count, “and they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there’s friendship for you,” he repeated. “He’s joining the hussars.”
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
“It’s not at all from friendship,” declared Nicholas, flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. “It is not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation.”
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
“Schubert, the colonel of the Pávlograd Hussars, is dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!” said the count, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.
“I have already told you, Papa,” said his son, “that if you don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.—I don’t know how to hide what I feel.” As he spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sónya and the young lady visitor.
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
“All right, all right!” said the old count. “He always flares up! This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,” he added, not noticing his visitor’s sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karágina turned to young Rostóv.
“What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ on Thursday. It was so dull without you,” said she, giving him a tender smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of Sónya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All Nicholas’ animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find Sónya.
“How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!” said Anna Mikháylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. “Cousinage—dangereux voisinage,” * she added.
* Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
“Yes,” said the countess when the brightness these young people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no one had put but which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both for girls and boys.”
“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.
“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued the countess. “Till now I have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full confidence,” said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men.”
“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. “Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What’s one to do, my dear?”
“What a charming creature your younger girl is,” said the visitor; “a little volcano!”
“Yes, a regular volcano,” said the count. “Takes after me! And what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons.”
“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it at that age.”
“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied the count. “Why, our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.”
“And she’s in love with Borís already. Just fancy!” said the countess with a gentle smile, looking at Borís and went on, evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied her: “Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid it ... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly” (she meant that they would be kissing), “but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her elder sister I was stricter.”
“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the handsome elder daughter, Countess Véra, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Véra’s beauty as smiles generally do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant, expression. Véra was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone—the visitors and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.
“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too clever with Véra,” said the count. “Well, what of that? She’s turned out splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Véra.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said the countess, when she had seen her guests out.
CHAPTER XIII
When Natásha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation in the drawing room, waiting for Borís to come out. She was already growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natásha dashed swiftly among the flower tubs and hid there.
Borís paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined his handsome face. Natásha, very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natásha was about to call him but changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she. Hardly had Borís gone than Sónya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natásha checked her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as under an invisible cap—to see what went on in the world. She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sónya, muttering to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.
“Sónya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said he, running up to her.
“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sónya.
“Ah, I know what it is.”
“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!”
“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that, for a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.
Sónya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natásha, not stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes. “What will happen now?” thought she.
“Sónya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!” said Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”
“I don’t like you to talk like that.”
“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sónya!” He drew her to him and kissed her.
“Oh, how nice,” thought Natásha; and when Sónya and Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Borís to her.
“Borís, come here,” said she with a sly and significant look. “I have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
Borís followed her, smiling.
“What is the something?” asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
“Kiss the doll,” said she.
Borís looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not reply.
“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer, closer!” she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.
“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from excitement.
Borís blushed.
“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
“Natásha,” he said, “you know that I love you, but....”
“You are in love with me?” Natásha broke in.
“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us do like that.... In another four years ... then I will ask for your hand.”
Natásha considered.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
“Settled!” replied Borís.
“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining sitting room.
CHAPTER XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came “to congratulate.” The countess wished to have a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna Mikháylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikháylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
“With you I will be quite frank,” said Anna Mikháylovna. “There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”
Anna Mikháylovna looked at Véra and paused. The countess pressed her friend’s hand.
“Véra,” she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a favorite, “how is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”
The handsome Véra smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” she replied as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sónya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever written. Borís and Natásha were at the other window and ceased talking when Véra entered. Sónya and Natásha looked at Véra with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Véra.
“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” she said. “You have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
“In a minute, in a minute,” he said, dipping his pen.
“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Véra. “You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.”
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in her hand.
“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natásha and Borís, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”
“Now, Véra, what does it matter to you?” said Natásha in defense, speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to everyone.
“Very silly,” said Véra. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”
“All have secrets of their own,” answered Natásha, getting warmer. “We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”
“I should think not,” said Véra, “because there can never be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with Borís.”
“Natálya Ilyníchna behaves very well to me,” remarked Borís. “I have nothing to complain of.”
“Don’t, Borís! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said Natásha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why does she bother me?” And she added, turning to Véra, “You’ll never understand it, because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname, bestowed on Véra by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please,” she finished quickly.
“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”
“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“said unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let’s go to the nursery.”
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Véra, “I said none to anyone.”
“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices through the door.
The handsome Véra, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “my life is not all roses either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means won’t last long? It’s all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what besides! But don’t let’s talk about me; tell me how you managed everything. I often wonder at you, Annette—how at your age you can rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly do it.”
“Ah, my love,” answered Anna Mikháylovna, “God grant you never know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love to distraction! One learns many things then,” she added with a certain pride. “That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those big people I write a note: ‘Princess So-and-So desires an interview with So and-So,’ and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or four times—till I get what I want. I don’t mind what they think of me.”
“Well, and to whom did you apply about Bóry?” asked the countess. “You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas is going as a cadet. There’s no one to interest himself for him. To whom did you apply?”
“To Prince Vasíli. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything, and put the matter before the Emperor,” said Princess Anna Mikháylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured to gain her end.
“Has Prince Vasíli aged much?” asked the countess. “I have not seen him since we acted together at the Rumyántsovs’ theatricals. I expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days,” said the countess, with a smile.
“He is just the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikháylovna, “overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear Princess. I am at your command.’ Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my position is now a terrible one,” continued Anna Mikháylovna, sadly, dropping her voice. “My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don’t know how to equip Borís.” She took out her handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred rubles, and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope now is in Count Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov. If he will not assist his godson—you know he is Bóry’s godfather—and allow him something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I shall not be able to equip him.”
The countess’ eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
“I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,” said the princess, “that here lives Count Cyril Vladímirovich Bezúkhov so rich, all alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It’s a burden to him, and Bóry’s life is only just beginning....”
“Surely he will leave something to Borís,” said the countess.
“Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still, I will take Borís and go to see him at once, and I shall speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it’s really all the same to me when my son’s fate is at stake.” The princess rose. “It’s now two o’clock and you dine at four. There will just be time.”
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of time, Anna Mikháylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the anteroom with him.
“Good-by, my dear,” said she to the countess who saw her to the door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, “Wish me good luck.”