War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy
Aylmer Maude, Louise Shanks Maude
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War and Peace,
3
BOOK ONE: 1805
4
CHAPTER I
5
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that
Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more
to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful
slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have
frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."
6
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna
Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna.
With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank
and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna
Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering
from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used
only by the elite.
7
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered
by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
8
"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."
9
"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the least
disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an
embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on
his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that
refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought,
and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of
importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to
Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented,
and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.
10
"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's mind
at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and
affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be
discerned.
11
"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like
these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are staying the
whole evening, I hope?"
12
"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I must
put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is coming
for me to take me there."
13
"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."
14
"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have
been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of
habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
15
"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."
16
"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold, listless
tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has
burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours."
17
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale
part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years,
overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had
become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel
like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the
expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it
did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips
expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her
charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it
necessary, to correct.
18
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst
out:
19
"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand things,
but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is
betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign
recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one
thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform
the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God
will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra
of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person
of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the
just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her
commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor
Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She
wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions.
What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood
and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants
nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what
have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they
will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is
invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don't
believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous
Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the
lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!"
20
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
21
"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been sent
instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of
Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a
cup of tea?"
22
"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the
best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones.
And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been
received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"
23
"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me," he
added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him,
though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his
visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be
appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a
poor creature."
24
Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were
trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the
baron.
25
Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor
anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was
pleased with.
26
"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
27
As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke
beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.
28
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and
courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished
both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man
recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she
said:
29
"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out
everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."
30
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
31
"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to
the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and
social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate
conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life
are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I
don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like him," she added in
a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. "Two such
charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and
so you don't deserve to have them."
32
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
33
"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I lack the
bump of paternity."
34
"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am
dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her face
assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her Majesty's
and you were pitied...."
35
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.
36
"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all a
father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools.
Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That
is the only difference between them." He said this smiling in a way
more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his
mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and
unpleasant.
37
"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father
there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna Pavlovna,
looking up pensively.
38
"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"
39
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.
40
"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?" she
asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I
don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little person who is
very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary
Bolkonskaya."
41
Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and
perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of
the head that he was considering this information.
42
"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in five
years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what we
fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"
43
"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the
well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the
late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is very
clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She
has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He
is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here tonight."
44
"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange that
affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave- slafe wigh
an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and
of good family and that's all I want."
45
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the
maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as
he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
46
"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise, young
Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be
arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."
47
CHAPTER II
48
Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father
to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge
as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as la
femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,1 was also there. She
had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not
go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince
Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced.
The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.
1
The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
49
To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.
50
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not
one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them
cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful and
solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in
the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her
Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though
politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a
sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return
to her the whole evening.
51
The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth,
but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when
she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the
case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness of
her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special and
peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this
pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and
health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited
young ones who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to
her a little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full
of life and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her
bright smile and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that
they were in a specially amiable mood that day.
52
The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying
steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat
down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a
pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought my work,"
said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present.
"Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me," she
added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to be quite a
small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed." And she spread
out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray
dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
53
"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,"
replied Anna Pavlovna.
54
"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.
55
"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince Vasili
to Anna Pavlovna.
56
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was
his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod
she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But in spite
of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the
sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over her
face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger
than the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference
to the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which
distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.
57
"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.
58
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round
as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the
little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
59
Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know the
Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."
60
"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."
61
"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a
reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had
finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who
wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart,
he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbe's plan
chimerical.
62
"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.
63
And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag.
As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work,
goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one
that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check
the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about
her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and
by a word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in
steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxiety
about Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he
approached the group round Mortemart to listen to what was being said
there, and again when he passed to another group whose center was the
abbe.
64
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna's
was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the
intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child
in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any
clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and
refined expression on the faces of those present he was always
expecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio.
Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an
opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of
doing.
65
CHAPTER III
66
Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round
the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful
Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little Princess
Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age.
The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna.
67
The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a
treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it
in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to
her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice
morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the
murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien
had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular
reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.
68
"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna, with a
pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in the sound of
that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."
69
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to
comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone to
listen to his tale.
70
"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest and
most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef on a
hot dish.
71
The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
72
"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful
young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of another
group.
73
The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which
she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly beautiful
woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and
ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling
diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking
at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the
privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders, back,
and bosom- which in the fashion of those days were very much exposed-
and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved
toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she not
show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary she even appeared shy
of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to
wish, but to be unable, to diminish its effect.
74
"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted his
shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.
75
"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.
76
The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered
a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was
being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm,
altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more
beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time
to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story
produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at once adopted just
the expression she saw on the maid of honor's face, and again relapsed
into her radiant smile.
77
The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.
78
"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."
79
There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her
seat.
80
"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.
81
Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle and
moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
82
Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance
to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that in spite of this
resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features were like his
sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous,
self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the
wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary was
dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen
self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and
mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms
and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
83
"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside the
princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.
84
"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging his
shoulders.
85
"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone which
showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he had
uttered them.
86
He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure
whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in a
dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of cuisse de nymphe
effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
87
The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in his
presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to
which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.
88
The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked
agitated.
89
"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the little
princess.
90
"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle into her
work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story
prevented her from going on with it.
91
The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he was
talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to the
rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe about
the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by the young
man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both were
talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why Anna
Pavlovna disapproved.
92
"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the
people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one powerful
nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place herself
disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the
maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would save the
world!"
93
"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.
94
At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre,
asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The Italian's face
instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary
expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.
95
"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had
the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of
the climate," said he.
96
Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.
97
CHAPTER IV
98
Just them another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young
man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about
him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step,
offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was
evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had
found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen
to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none
seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away
from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna
Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.
99
"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.
100
"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been pleased
to take me as an aide-de-camp...."
101
"And Lise, your wife?"
102
"She will go to the country."
103
"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"
104
"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same coquettish
manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has been telling
us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"
105
Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from the
moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with glad,
affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked round
Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was
touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming face he gave him an
unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
106
"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to Pierre.
107
"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper with
you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the vicomte
who was continuing his story.
108
"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished to
say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his daughter
got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.
109
"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me of a
pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave
your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.
110
His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
111
"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.
112
"Very," said Pierre.
113
In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."
114
Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew his
father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who had
been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Prince
Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed
had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed only anxiety
and fear.
115
"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him into the
anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what news I
may take back to my poor boy."
116
Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might not
go away.
117
"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he would
be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.
118
"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered Prince
Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I should advise
you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn. That would be the
best way."
119
The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come
to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son.
It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had obtained an
invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat listening to the
vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened her, an embittered
look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a moment; then she
smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more tightly.
120
"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to do
this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor," she
added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were,"
she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
121
"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her beautiful
head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she stood
waiting by the door.
122
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be economized
if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having once realized
that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be
unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But
in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her second appeal,
something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was
quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the first steps in
his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of
those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made up their minds, will
not rest until they have gained their end, and are prepared if
necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and
even to make scenes. This last consideration moved him.
123
"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's memory,
I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the Guards.
Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"
124
"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.
125
"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..." she
faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich Kutuzov...
recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and
then..."
126
Prince Vasili smiled.
127
"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered since
his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that all the
Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants."
128
"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."
129
"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before, "we
shall be late."
130
"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"
131
"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"
132
"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."
133
"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
134
Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all
the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone her face
resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the
group where the vicomte was still talking, and again pretended to
listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was
accomplished.
135
CHAPTER V
136
"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?"
asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa and
Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and Monsieur
Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the
nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is as if
the whole world had gone crazy."
137
Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.
138
"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'2 They say he was
very fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"
2
God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
139
"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."
140
"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he became
more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward of their
betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they are sending
ambassadors to compliment the usurper."
141
And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
142
Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.
143
"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said he.
144
The princess listened, smiling.
145
"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which he
is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but
follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone too
far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society- I
mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed, and
then..."
146
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:
147
"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which always
accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, "has declared
that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their
own form of government; and I believe that once free from the usurper,
the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its
rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist
emigrant.
148
"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."
149
"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the
conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."
150
"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte without
looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to know the
real state of French public opinion.
151
"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic smile.
152
It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.
153
"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'" Prince
Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon's words.
"'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I do not know how far
he was justified in saying so."
154
"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the duc
even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one
hero less on earth."
155
Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something
inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
156
"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was a
political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness
of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of
that deed."
157
"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.
158
"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing her
work nearer to her.
159
"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.
160
"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his
knee with the palm of his hand.
161
The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.
162
"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled from
the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone
understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good,
he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."
163
"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.
164
But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
165
"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."
166
"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.
167
"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he might rid
them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a great man. The
Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by
this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his
wish to express all that was in his mind.
168
"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.
169
"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
170
"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."
171
"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected an
ironical voice.
172
"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from
prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon
has retained in full force."
173
"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last
deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were,
"high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not
love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and
equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the
contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."
174
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of
Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte
in a vigorous attack on the orator.
175
"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the fact
of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"
176
"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"
177
"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
178
"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.
179
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His
smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his
grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to
ask forgiveness.
180
The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that
this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were
silent.
181
"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince Andrew.
"Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between
his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it
seems to me."
182
"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this
reinforcement.
183
"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man was
great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he
gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are other acts
which it is difficult to justify."
184
Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of
Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to
go.
185
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:
186
"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it.
Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.
187
"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must
have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her
taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."
188
Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.
189
"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a livery,
get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.'"
190
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his
audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several
persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however
smile.
191
"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and
her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no longer
and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world knew...."
192
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told
it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and the
others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so agreeably
ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote
the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last
and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when
and where.
193
CHAPTER VI
194
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began
to take their leave.
195
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge
red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a drawing room
and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something
particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was
absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the
general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, till
the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and
inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by
his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned toward
him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his
indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to see you again, but I also
hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre."
196
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again
everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions
are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."
And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.
197
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders to
the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,
pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
198
"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little princess,
taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in a low
voice.
199
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she
contemplated between Anatole and the little princess' sister-in-law.
200
"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.
"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
revoir!"- and she left the hall.
201
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face
close to her, began to whisper something.
202
Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and a
cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to the
French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual
spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
203
"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince
Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?
Delightful!"
204
"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing up
her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be there."
205
"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from
awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the
shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as
though embracing her.
206
Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her
husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he
seem.
207
"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.
208
Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest
fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into
the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the
carriage.
209
"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well as
with his feet.
210
The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark
carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under
pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.
211
"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, disagreeable
tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
212
"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.
213
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
whom he had promised to take home.
214
"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very
nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
Hippolyte burst out laughing.
215
"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer
who gives himself the airs of a monarch."
216
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you were
saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
know how to deal with them."
217
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like
one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa,
took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was
Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in
the middle.
218
"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now," said
Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.
219
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his
eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
220
"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but- I do not
know how to express it... not by a balance of political power...."
221
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
conversation.
222
"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you at
last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
223
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
224
"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the other."
225
"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."
226
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money. Write
to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre had
already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided on
anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
Pierre rubbed his forehead.
227
"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he
had met that evening.
228
"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"
229
"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the
army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the
world is not right."
230
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish words.
He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such
nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other
answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.
231
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
wars," he said.
232
"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.
233
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
234
"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."
235
"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.
236
"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He paused.
"I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!"
237
CHAPTER VII
238
The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrew
shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it had had
in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa.
The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as
fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed
a chair for her.
239
"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and
fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married? How
stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying
so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you
are, Monsieur Pierre!"
240
"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess with
none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.
241
The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the
quick.
242
"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand it; I
don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars. How is
it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need it? Now
you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is Uncle's
aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well known, so much
appreciated by everyone. The other day at the Apraksins' I heard a lady
asking, 'Is that the famous Prince Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed.
"He is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp
to the Emperor. You know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously.
Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"
243
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.
244
"When are you starting?" he asked.
245
"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of," said
the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had
spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must be
broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked significantly at
her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered, and a shudder ran
down her back.
246
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone
besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone
of frigid politeness.
247
"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.
248
"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."
249
"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.
250
"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to be
afraid."
251
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.
252
"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince Andrew
slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
253
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
254
"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."
255
"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew. "You
had better go."
256
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
257
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him and
now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
258
"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?"
259
"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:
260
"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
like that six months ago?"
261
"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.
262
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.
263
"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!"
264
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
265
"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
the pleasure of spending the evening with you."
266
"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.
267
"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which
indicates that patience is exhausted.
268
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.
269
"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.
270
"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand as
he would have done to a stranger.
271
CHAPTER VIII
272
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
with his small hand.
273
"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.
274
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.
275
"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.
276
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.
277
"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."
278
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski
who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna'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.
279
"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 Pavlovna'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.
280
"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..."
281
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.
282
"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.
283
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.
284
"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.
285
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.
286
"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."
287
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly and
affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority.
288
"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 Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly-
all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"
289
"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging his
shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"
290
"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme il
faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women, 'women
and wine' I don't understand!"
291
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin'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.
292
"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."
293
"You give me your word of honor not to go?"
294
"On my honor!"
295
CHAPTER IX
296
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 Kuragin 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.
297
"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.
298
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 Kuragin's.
299
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.
300
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.
301
"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.
302
"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.
303
"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."
304
"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."
305
"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.
306
"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
Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.
307
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 Dolokhov,
an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler and duelist,
who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.
308
"I don't understand. What's it all about?"
309
"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole, taking
a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
310
"First of all you must drink!"
311
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 Dolokhov 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.
312
"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
glass, "or I won't let you go!"
313
"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to
the window.
314
Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and distinctly
repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself particularly to
Anatole and Pierre.
315
Dolokhov 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. Dolokhov was a man of small means
and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of
rubles, Dolokhov 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. Dolokhov could play all games and
nearly always won. However much he drank, he never lost his
clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at that time notorious
among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
316
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.
317
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.
318
"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.
319
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame out
with a crash.
320
"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.
321
"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.
322
"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, 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.
323
Dolokhov, 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.
324
"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.
325
"No, fifty," replied the latter.
326
"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?"
327
"Quite right," said the Englishman.
328
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.
329
"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to
attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else does
the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"
330
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
Dolokhov'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.
331
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones
of the pavement.
332
"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
333
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily,
Dolokhov 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.
Dolokhov'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 Dolokhov's shirt.
334
"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible man.
335
Anatole stopped him.
336
"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed. Eh?...
What then?... Eh?"
337
Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged
himself on his seat.
338
"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words
separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down
there. Now then!"
339
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 Dolokhov'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. Dolokhov 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 Dolokhov 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 never them again. Suddenly
he was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing
on the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
340
"It's empty."
341
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolokhov
jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
342
"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil take
you!" came from different sides.
343
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money.
Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the
window sill.
344
"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!"
345
"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.
346
"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go
giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.
347
"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.
348
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who
touched him was sent flying.
349
"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."
350
"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
us."
351
And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground,
and began dancing round the room with it.
352
CHAPTER X
353
Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess Drubetskaya who
had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on the evening of
Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Emperor, an
exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of Semenov
Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to
Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's endeavors and
entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna Mikhaylovna
returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the
Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where and where her
darling Bory, 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
Radzivilov.
354
It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs- 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 Rostova's big house on
the Povarskaya, 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.
355
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 Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya, 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.
356
"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"- 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 chere! 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 Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and
the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the
enormous table would say: "Well, Dmitri, 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.
357
"Marya Lvovna Karagina 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.
358
"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."
359
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
360
"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child... at
the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... 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 Apraksina... 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
Bezukhov, and about his illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had
behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna's reception.
361
"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!"
362
"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 Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.
363
"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."
364
"You don't say so!" replied the countess.
365
"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up to
heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov
has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back to Moscow.
Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's affair hushed
up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."
366
"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.
367
"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the visitor.
"He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, 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!"
368
"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted the
count, dying with laughter.
369
"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"
370
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
371
"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov'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."
372
"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."
373
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
374
"I should think he has a score of them."
375
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation, evidently
wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in
society.
376
"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."
377
"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."
378
"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I was
saying, Prince Vasili 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 Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know
it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself. Besides, Cyril
Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also my Bory's
godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at all to the
fact.
379
"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some
inspection business," remarked the visitor.
380
"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, that is a pretext. The
fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich, hearing how ill
he is."
381
"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!"
382
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.
383
CHAPTER XI
384
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.
385
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.
386
"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it
is. My dear pet!"
387
"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
husband.
388
"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.
389
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.
390
"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha 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.
391
"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."
392
Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
393
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
necessary to take some part in it.
394
"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of yours?
A daughter, I suppose?"
395
Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
396
Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna
Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest son;
Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya, 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 Apraksina. Now and then
they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
397
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from childhood,
were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Boris
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. Boris on the contrary at once found his footing, and related
quietly and humorously how he had know 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 Natasha. 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. Boris did not laugh.
398
"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.
399
"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered, returning
his smile.
400
Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump
boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
disturbed.
401
CHAPTER XII
402
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 Sonya, the niece. Sonya 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 Natasha and Boris, escape from the drawing room.
403
"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and pointing
to Nicholas, "his friend Boris 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.
404
"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.
405
"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."
406
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
407
"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."
408
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were both
regarding him with a smile of approbation.
409
"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd 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.
410
"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 Sonya and the young lady
visitor.
411
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any moment
to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
412
"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.
413
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to
young Rostov.
414
"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so dull
without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.
415
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 Sonya, 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 Sonya.
416
"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out.
"Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"3 she added.
3
Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
417
"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."
418
"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.
419
"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."
420
"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?"
421
"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor; "a
little volcano!"
422
"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."
423
"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it
at that age."
424
"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our mothers
used to be married at twelve or thirteen."
425
"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the countess
with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' 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."
426
"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome elder
daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
427
But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally do; on
the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant,
expression. Vera 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.
428
"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to
make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.
429
"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned
out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.
430
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.
431
"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess, when
she had seen her guests out.
432
CHAPTER XIII
433
When Natasha 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 Boris 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 Natasha dashed swiftly among the
flower tubs and hid there.
434
Boris 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. Natasha, 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. Natasha was about to
call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me," thought she.
Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering
angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha 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. Sonya, muttering to herself,
kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas
came in.
435
"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he, running up
to her.
436
"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.
437
"Ah, I know what it is."
438
"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"
439
"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that,
for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.
440
Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not stirring
and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes.
"What will happen now?" thought she.
441
"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!"
said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."
442
"I don't like you to talk like that."
443
"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him and
kissed her.
444
"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had gone
out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.
445
"Boris, 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.
446
Boris followed her, smiling.
447
"What is the something?" asked he.
448
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had thrown
down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
449
"Kiss the doll," said she.
450
Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.
451
"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.
452
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and
fear appeared on her flushed face.
453
"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.
454
Boris blushed.
455
"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.
456
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.
457
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the
tubs and stood, hanging her head.
458
"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."
459
"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.
460
"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
years... then I will ask for your hand."
461
Natasha considered.
462
"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"
463
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
464
"Settled!" replied Boris.
465
"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"
466
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining
sitting room.
467
CHAPTER XIV
468
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
tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood, Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from
Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but pleasant face,
drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
469
"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There are not
many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your friendship."
470
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
friend's hand.
471
"Vera," 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..."
472
The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.
473
"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied as
she rose to go to her own room.
474
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one
pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sonya was
sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the
first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window
and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera
with guilty, happy faces.
475
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love; but
apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.
476
"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.
477
"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.
478
"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued Vera.
"You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed
of you."
479
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.
480
"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and Boris,
or between you two? It's all nonsense!"
481
"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
speaking very gently.
482
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.
483
"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"
484
"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer. "We
don't interfere with you and Berg."
485
"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be anything
wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are behaving
with Boris."
486
"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
nothing to complain of."
487
"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,"
said Natasha 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 Vera, "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 Vera 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.
488
"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."
489
"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."
490
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
491
"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none to
anyone."
492
"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices through
the door.
493
The handsome Vera, 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.
494
In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
495
"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."
496
"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "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."
497
"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" 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?"
498
"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything, and
put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured
to gain her end.
499
"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not seen him
since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I expect he
has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said the
countess, with a smile.
500
"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna, "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 Mikhaylovna, 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
Boris." 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 Vladimirovich Bezukhov.
If he will not assist his godson- you know he is Bory'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."
501
The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
502
"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess, "that
here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all alone...
that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a burden to
him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."
503
"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.
504
"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still,
I will take Boris 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."
505
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of
time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and went into the
anteroom with him.
506
"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."
507
"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the count
coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: "If he
is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the house, you
know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear. We
will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlov
never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"
508
CHAPTER XV
509
"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as Countess
Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw
covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him. Count
Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future depends on
him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you so well know
how to be."
510
"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of it..."
answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it for your
sake."
511
Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses, and,
hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency was
worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
512
"We may as well go back," said the son in French.
513
"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand on
his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.
514
Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking
off his cloak.
515
"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the hall
porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's why I
have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my friend... I
only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying here, is he not?
Please announce me."
516
The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and turned
away.
517
"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to a
footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who
ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
518
The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large
Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly
ascended the carpeted stairs.
519
"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a touch,
"you promised me!"
520
The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
521
They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the
apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
522
Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall, were
about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they
entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasili
came out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as
was his custom when at home- taking leave of a good-looking,
dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg doctor, Lorrain.
523
"Then it is certain?" said the prince.
524
"Prince, humanum est errare,4 but..." replied the doctor,
swallowing his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French
accent.
4
To err is human.
525
"Very well, very well..."
526
Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the doctor
with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry. The
son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his
mother's face, and he smiled slightly.
527
"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive look
fixed on her.
528
Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and perplexed.
Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging the bow
turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a movement of the
head and lips indicating very little hope for the patient.
529
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It is
terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris. "He
wanted to thank you himself."
530
Boris bowed again politely.
531
"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you have
done for us."
532
"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna,"
said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in tone and manner,
here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed under an
obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he had done
in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.
533
"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing
Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on
in his usual tone of indifference.
534
"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"
replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque
manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly
and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.
535
"Are you living with your mother?"
536
"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding, "your
excellency."
537
"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said Anna
Mikhaylovna.
538
"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I
never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too,
I am told."
539
"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.
540
"They give little hope," replied the prince.
541
"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this
fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.
542
Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw that
he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's fortune,
and hastened to reassure him.
543
"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle," said
she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, "I know
his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one with him
except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She bent her
head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his final duty,
Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no
worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill.
We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know how to say
these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for
me. I am used to suffering."
544
Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he had
done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid of Anna
Mikhaylovna.
545
"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
expecting a crisis."
546
"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
Christian..."
547
A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the
count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her body
was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince Vasili
turned to her.
548
"Well, how is he?"
549
"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.
550
"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am at
your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have gone
through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
551
The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room at
Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position she
had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili to
take a seat beside her.
552
"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him to
dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the prince.
553
"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become
depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."
554
He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight of
stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.
555
CHAPTER XVI
556
Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been
for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father's house.
Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be already
known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father- who were never
favorably disposed toward him- would have used it to turn the count
against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to his
father's part of the house. Entering the drawing room, where the
princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom
were sitting at embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the
eldest who was reading- the one who had met Anna Mikhaylovna. The two
younger ones were embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they
differed only in that one had a little mole on her lip which made her
much prettier. Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a leper.
The eldest princess paused in her reading and silently stared at him
with frightened eyes; the second assumed precisely the same expression;
while the youngest, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and
lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked
by the amusing scene she foresaw. She drew her wool down through the
canvas and, scarcely able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if
trying to make out the pattern.
557
"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"
558
"I recognize you only too well, too well."
559
"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
but unabashed.
560
"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you
have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."
561
"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.
562
"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready- it is almost
time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and
busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was
only busy causing him annoyance.
563
Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and
said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see
him."
564
And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the
sister with the mole.
565
Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house. He
sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are going to
behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is
all I have to say to you. The count is very, very ill, and you must not
see him at all."
566
Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time
in his rooms upstairs.
567
When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his room,
stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the
wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring
savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk,
muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.
568
"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger at
someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the rights
of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre- who at that moment
imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just effected the
dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured London- could
pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young
officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Boris
was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual
impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the hand with a friendly
smile.
569
"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. "I
have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
well."
570
"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him," answered
Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.
571
Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.
572
"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
573
"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his son,
Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how we
went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an age..."
574
"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and slightly
sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna Mikhaylovna
Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is Nicholas. I
never knew any Madame Jacquot."
575
Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
576
"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One has
so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well, now we
know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne expedition?
The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the
Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only Villeneuve
doesn't make a mess of things!
577
Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the
papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.
578
"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know
nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and
your father."
579
Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his companion's
sake that the latter might say something he would afterwards regret.
But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into
Pierre's eyes.
580
"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on. "Everybody
is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune, though he may
perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."
581
"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."
582
Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
something disconcerting to himself.
583
"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
trying to get something out of the rich man?"
584
"So it does," thought Pierre.
585
"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are quite
mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are very
poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that your
father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and neither
I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."
586
For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped
up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick, clumsy
way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a feeling
of mingled shame and vexation.
587
"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know
very well..."
588
But Boris again interrupted him.
589
"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put
at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it a
rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to
dinner at the Rostovs'?"
590
And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
became quite pleasant again.
591
"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful
fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you don't
know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we were
children. You might think that I... I understand, quite understand. I
could not have done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but
it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It's
queer," he added after a pause, "that you should have suspected me!" He
began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll get better acquainted,"
and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I have not once been in to
see the count. He has not sent for me.... I am sorry for him as a man,
but what can one do?"
592
"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
Boris with a smile.
593
Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the
Boulogne expedition.
594
A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was going. Pierre, in
order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner,
and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles
into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing up and down
the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with his
imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant,
intelligent, and resolute young man.
595
As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely
life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man and made
up his mind that they would be friends.
596
Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes
and her face was tearful.
597
"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may I
shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be left
like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces put
it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!...
Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."
598
"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.
599
"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when they
were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."
600
"I don't understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked the
son.
601
"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."
602
"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"
603
"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"
604
"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."
605
"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.
606
CHAPTER XVII
607
After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all alone
applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
608
"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid
who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then
I'll find you another place."
609
The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating poverty,
and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always
found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking to her with
exaggerated politeness.
610
"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.
611
"Ask the count to come to me."
612
The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
usual.
613
"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to have,
my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras were not
ill-spent. He is worth it!"
614
He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
his gray hair.
615
"What are your commands, little countess?"
616
"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. "It's, the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.
"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."
617
Her face became sad.
618
"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out his
pocketbook.
619
"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking
out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.
620
"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out in a
tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will
rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"
621
Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count's
house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.
622
"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the
deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a
moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't bring
me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones for
the countess."
623
"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing deeply.
624
"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me to
inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the count
was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always a sign of
approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it brought at
once?"
625
"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."
626
"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile when the
young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with him.
That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."
627
"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world," said
the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."
628
"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the count,
and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.
629
When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money, all in
clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess'
little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something was agitating
her.
630
"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.
631
"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."
632
"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began, with
a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified, elderly face,
and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
633
Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
634
"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."
635
Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they- friends from childhood- had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.
636
CHAPTER XVIII
637
Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible
dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common
sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the
Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both
cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told
good stories about her, while none the less all without exception
respected and feared her.
638
In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of
war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the recruiting.
None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had
appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were smoking
and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head first
to one side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident
pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he
egged on against each other.
639
One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and
wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most
fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite
at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was
inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an
old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a man with "a sharp
tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending
to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards,
irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the
middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting
it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg,
an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom Boris was to travel to
join the army, and about whom Natasha had, teased her elder sister
Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended." The count sat between them
and listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing
boston, a card game he was very fond of, was that of listener,
especially when he succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one
another.
640
"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich," said
Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
expressions with the choicest French phrases- which was a peculiarity
of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur
l'etat;5 you want to make something out of your company?"
5
You expect to make an income out of the government.
641
"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry the
advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."
642
Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct
bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at
all put out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but
as soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
643
"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I
should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,
pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
always be the chief desire of everyone else.
644
"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I shall
be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies occur
much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be
done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little
aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting a smoke
ring.
645
"La balance y est...6 A German knows how to skin a flint, as
the proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side
of his mouth and winking at the count.
6
So that squares matters.
646
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshin was
talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime
the company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the
company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with
everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him.
Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect
that others, too, might have their own interests. But all he said was
so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so
obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.
647
"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go- foot or horse- that
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking
his feet off the sofa.
648
Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the drawing
room.
649
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
expecting the summons to zakuska,7 avoid engaging in any long
conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order to
show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
waiting for- some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
that is not yet ready.
7
Hors d'oeuvres.
650
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk, but
he went on naively looking around through his spectacles as if in
search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He
was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most
of the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with
curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy,
modest fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.
651
"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.
652
"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.
653
"You have not yet seen my husband?"
654
"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.
655
"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
interesting."
656
"Very interesting."
657
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It was
charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was heard on
all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
658
"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.
659
"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
entered the room.
660
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.
661
"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the count who
was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay?
Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just
see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed to the girls.
"You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not...."
662
Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl, but
I like her."
663
She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule
and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with the
pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and addressed
herself to Pierre.
664
"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high tone
of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up her
sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike
way through his spectacles.
665
"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.
666
"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."
667
She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly keep
from laughing.
668
"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya Dmitrievna.
669
The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed on
the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because
Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna Mikhaylovna
with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling Julie Karagina
went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the
whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and
governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs
scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down
in their places. Then the strains of the count's household band were
replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors,
and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat the
countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna Mikhaylovna on her
left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat
the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and Shinshin and the
other male visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one
side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg, and Pierre beside
Boris; and on the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses.
From behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases the count kept
glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and
busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not neglecting his own. The
countess in turn, without omitting her duties as hostess, threw
significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose
face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual
with his gray hair. At the ladies' end an even chatter of voices was
heard all the time, at the men's end the voices sounded louder and
louder, especially that of the colonel of hussars who, growing more and
more flushed, ate and drank so much that the count held him up as a
pattern to the other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to Vera
that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling. Boris was telling
his new friend Pierre who the guests were and exchanging glances with
Natasha, who was sitting opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the
new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with
savory patties and went on to the game without omitting a single dish
or one of the wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously
forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and
whispered: "Dry Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case
might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's
monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and
drank with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the
other guests. Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls
of thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed
for the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that
funny lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without
knowing why.
670
Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina, to
whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya wore a
company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned
pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas
and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking round
uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon
the children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes,
wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the
dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the
butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned,
trying to appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was
mortified because no one would understand that it was not to quench his
thirst or from greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a
conscientious desire for knowledge.
671
CHAPTER XIX
672
At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more animated. The
colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in
Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day
been forwarded by courier to the commander in chief.
673
"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked Shinshin.
"He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our turn next."
674
The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to
the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's remark.
675
"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a German
accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He declares in ze
manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening
Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze
sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word with particular
emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
676
Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:
677
... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and absolute
aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations- has now decided
him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition
for the attainment of that purpose.
678
"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine
with dignity and looking to the count for approval.
679
"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:8 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam,
but turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and
smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.9 Suvorov now- he
knew what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,10
and where are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un
peu,"11 said he, continually changing from French to Russian.
8
Do you know the proverb?
9
That suits us down to the ground.
10
Hollow.
11
I just ask you that.
680
"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the colonel,
thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill
pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"... he dwelt
particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he ended, again
turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and zere's
an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar, how do
you judge of it?" he added, addressing Nicholas, who when he heard that
the war was being discussed had turned from his partner with eyes and
ears intent on the colonel.
681
"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his
plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as much decision and
desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great danger.
"I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer," he concluded,
conscious- as were others- after the words were uttered that his
remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and were
therefore awkward.
682
"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.
683
Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and
down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
684
Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.
685
"That's fine," said he.
686
"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping
the table.
687
"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya Dmitrievna's
deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the table. "What are
you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the hussar, "and why are
you exciting yourself? Do you think the French are here?"
688
"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.
689
"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You know
my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."
690
"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in
God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,"
replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried the whole
length of the table.
691
"That's true!"
692
Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end
and the men's at the other.
693
"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you won't
ask!"
694
"I will," replied Natasha.
695
Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She half
rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what
was coming, and turning to her mother:
696
"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
audible the whole length of the table.
697
"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.
698
The conversation was hushed.
699
"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice sounded
still more firm and resolute.
700
The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook her
fat finger.
701
"Cossack!" she said threateningly.
702
Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the
elders.
703
"You had better take care!" said the countess.
704
"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried boldly,
with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good
part.
705
Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
706
"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and to
Pierre, glancing at him again.
707
"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.
708
Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
Marya Dmitrievna.
709
"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice cream."
710
"Carrot ices."
711
"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed; "I
want to know!"
712
Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer
but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who
had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.
713
Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving
their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and reached across
the table to clink glasses with the count, with the children, and with
one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and in the
same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the guests
returned to the drawing room and to the count's study.
714
CHAPTER XX
715
The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
some in the sitting room, some in the library.
716
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from
dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything.
The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered round the
clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she
had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the
other young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas, who were noted for
their musical talent, to sing something. Natasha, who was treated as
though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the
same time felt shy.
717
"What shall we sing?" she said.
718
"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.
719
"Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But where
is Sonya?"
720
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to
look for her.
721
Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran to the
nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that she
must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the
place of mourning for the younger female generation in the Rostov
household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on Nurse's
dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink
dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing
so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook. Natasha's face,
which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's day, suddenly
changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad
neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
722
"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was
crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid
her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the
blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort Sonya
sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
723
"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have come...
he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she showed a
paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas had written,
"still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can understand...
what a soul he has!"
724
And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
725
"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Boris
also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice... there are
no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would
have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can't be done.
And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the countess as her
mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling Nicholas' career and am
heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness," and she
made the sign of the cross, "I love her so much, and all of you, only
Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you
that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing...."
726
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that
she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.
727
"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason
of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to you since
dinner? Hasn't she?"
728
"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and
she found them on my table and said she'd show them to Mamma, and that
I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him to marry me, but
that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with her all day...
Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."
729
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha lifted
her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting
her.
730
"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you remember
how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after
supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't quite
remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be arranged and
how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has married his
first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know. And Boris says
it is quite possible. You know I have told him all about it. And he is
so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you cry, Sonya, dear love,
darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed. "Vera's spiteful; never
mind her! And all will come right and she won't say anything to Mamma.
Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn't care at all for Julie."
731
Natasha kissed her on the hair.
732
Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
733
"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
frock and hair.
734
"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that had
strayed from under her friend's plaits.
735
Both laughed.
736
"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"
737
"Come along!"
738
"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"
739
And she set off at a run along the passage.
740
Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people sang
the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted. Then
Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
741
At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
742
That while her fingers touch the harp
743
A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
744
He had not finished the last verse before the young people began to get
ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the
coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.
745
Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged him,
as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in
which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music
began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing
and blushing:
746
"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."
747
"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you will
be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender
little girl.
748
While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning
up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly
happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She
was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up
lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to
hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and
where she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself
and smiling over the fan.
749
"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she crossed
the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.
750
Natasha blushed and laughed.
751
"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised
at?"
752
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs being
pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya Dmitrievna
had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and
older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long,
and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First
came Marya Dmitrievna and the count, both with merry countenances. The
count, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent
arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair
gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the
ecossaise was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted
up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:
753
"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"
754
This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth.
(Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)
755
"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.
756
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the
jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout partner,
Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his
shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a
smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the
onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay
strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant
dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly
filled by the domestic serfs- the men on one side and the women on the
other- who with beaming faces had come to see their master making
merry.
757
"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked the
nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
758
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did
not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful
arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the countess), and
only her stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was
expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in Marya Dmitrievna
found expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering
nose. But if the count, getting more and more into the swing of it,
charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers
and the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Marya
Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions- the least
effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp
her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual
severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could
not attract a moment's attention to their own evolutions and did not
even try to do so. All were watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look
at Papa!" though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple.
In the intervals of the dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and
shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster;
lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying
round Marya Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until,
turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas,
raising his soft foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling
and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and
laughter led by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily
and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
759
"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.
760
"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up her
sleeves and puffing heavily.
761
CHAPTER XXI
762
While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being danced, to
a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen
and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke.
The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession,
communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the
sacrament of unction, and in his house there was the bustle and thrill
of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates,
a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in
expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral. The
Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending
aides-de-camp to inquire after the count's health, came himself that
evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of Catherine's
court, Count Bezukhov.
763
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their
bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed on him
by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince Vasili, who
had grown thinner and paler during the last few days, escorted him to
the door, repeating something to him several times in low tones.
764
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all alone
on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other,
leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his hand.
After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with
frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long
corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the eldest
princess.
765
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man's
room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy
at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
766
"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed," said
an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
listening naively to his words.
767
"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the lady,
adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own
on the subject.
768
"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament, "replied the priest, passing his
hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald
head.
769
"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at the
other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"
770
"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."
771
"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."
772
The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes red
from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
table.
773
"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather.
"The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow one feels
as if one were in the country."
774
"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
something to drink?"
775
Lorrain considered.
776
"Has he taken his medicine?"
777
"Yes."
778
The doctor glanced at his watch.
779
"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar," and
he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
780
"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an
aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."
781
"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp. "And
who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.
782
"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.
783
Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to Lorrain's
instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
784
"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German, addressing
Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
785
Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before
his nose.
786
"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with a
decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to understand
and state the patient's condition.
787
Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.
788
In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning
before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt
pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,
whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white
feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to
bark.
789
"Ah, is it you, cousin?"
790
She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth
that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with
varnish.
791
"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."
792
"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business,
Catiche,"12 muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on
the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I must
say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."
12
Catherine.
793
"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her
unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
prince, she prepared to listen.
794
"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."
795
"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending it
downwards as was his habit.
796
It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
understood without naming.
797
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her
legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion in her
prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the
icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of
sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long.
Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of weariness.
798
"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn out
as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a very
serious talk."
799
Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes
too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the
next glanced round in alarm.
800
The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.
801
"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not without
an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you
all, like children of my own, as you know."
802
The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the same
dull expression.
803
"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince Vasili
went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her.
"You know, Catiche, that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and my wife-
are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for
you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me; but, my
dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything. Do
you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing to his portrait,
"definitely demanded that he should be called."
804
Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not make
out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she
was simply looking at him.
805
"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."
806
"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently, rubbing
his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little table that
he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself
that last winter the count made a will by which he left all his
property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."
807
"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."
808
"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little table
and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if a letter
has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for Pierre's
legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of the count's
services, his request would be granted?..."
809
The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about the
subject under discussion than those they are talking with.
810
"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand, "that
letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew of it.
The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as
soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate what he
meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are opened, the
will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and the petition will
certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate
son."
811
"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if anything
might happen, only not that.
812
"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be the
legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must know, my
dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have
been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you
ought to know where they are, and must find them, because..."
813
"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and not
changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you think we
are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit...
un batard!"13 she added, as if supposing that this translation
of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the invalidity of
his contention.
13
A bastard.
814
"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so intelligent,
how is it you don't see that if the count has written a letter to the
Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it follows that
Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count Bezukhov, and will then
inherit everything under the will? And if the will and letter are not
destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation of having
been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!14 That's certain."
14
And all that follows therefrom.
815
"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you,
mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the princess with
the expression women assume when they suppose they are saying something
witty and stinging.
816
"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili
impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and the
will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear
girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,
then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"
(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."
817
At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;
her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice
when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself
evidently did not expect.
818
"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and I
don't now."
819
She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
820
"And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who have
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid! Fine! I
don't want anything, Prince."
821
"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..." replied
Prince Vasili.
822
But the princess did not listen to him.
823
"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect
nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude- the
blackest ingratitude- in this house..."
824
"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince Vasili,
his cheeks twitching more than ever.
825
"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
been intriguing!"
826
The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand. She
had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race.
She gave her companion an angry glance.
827
"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it was
all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterwards
forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his
last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let
him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."
828
"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who would
again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though he
never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a sigh, "I
shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward,
that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world
one has to be cunning and cruel."
829
"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."
830
"No, I have a wicked heart."
831
"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship and
wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself, and
let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it
but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all
where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to the
count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. You
understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help
him and you."
832
"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I know!" cried the
princess.
833
"That's not the point, my dear."
834
"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that Anna
Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile
woman!"
835
"Do not let us lose any time..."
836
"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here and
told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about
Sophie- I can't repeat them- that it made the count quite ill and he
would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote
this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid."
837
"We've got to it at last- why did you not tell me about it sooner?"
838
"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow," said the
princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I have a sin, a
great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost shrieked the
princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come worming herself in
here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time will come!"
839
CHAPTER XXII
840
While these conversations were going on in the reception room and the
princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for)
and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him) was
driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels rolled
softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna, having
turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he was
asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre followed
Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began to think of
the interview with his dying father which awaited him. He noticed that
they had not come to the front entrance but to the back door. While he
was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who looked like
tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the shadow of
the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the
same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither
Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help
seeing these people, took any notice of them. "It seems to be all
right," Pierre concluded, and followed Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly
ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who
was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it was
necessary for him to go to the count at all, still less why he had to
go by the back stairs, yet judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of
assurance and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely
necessary. Halfway up the stairs they were almost knocked over by some
men who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots
clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna
Mikhaylovna pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them
there.
841
"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna Mikhaylovna
of one of them.
842
"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now
permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."
843
"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he reached the
landing. "I'd better go to my own room."
844
Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
845
"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her son's
when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no less than
you do, but be a man!"
846
"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at her
over his spectacles.
847
"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done you.
Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death." She
sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to
me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."
848
Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had
to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who was
already opening a door.
849
This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The first
door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid with the
decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the house
was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna in
passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Prince Vasili and
the eldest princess were sitting close together talking. Seeing them
pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while the
princess jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door
with all her might.
850
This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on
Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre
stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Anna
Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as
if to say that this was no more than she had expected.
851
"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
852
Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those
sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and
water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a
censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.
They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn
Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre
who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.
853
Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the decisive
moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg lady she
now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly
than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person
the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a
rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the count's
confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly
bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received
the blessing first of one and then of another priest.
854
"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the priests;
"all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man is the
count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"
855
Having said this she went up to the doctor.
856
"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is there
any hope?"
857
The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away
from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and
tenderly sad voice, she said:
858
"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit and
wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone was
watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.
859
Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved
toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna had
disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him
with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they
whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind
of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before
received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to
the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up
and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became
respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At
first Pierre wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady,
and also to pick up the glove himself and to pass round the doctors who
were not even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not
do, and that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of
awful rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore
bound to accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the
aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands
symmetrically on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue,
and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his
own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of
those who were guiding him.
860
Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning;
his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and noticed
Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do),
and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly
fixed on.
861
"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is well!"
and he turned to go.
862
But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated, not
knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the count,"
yet ashamed to call him "father."
863
"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend..."
864
Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili in
perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him, and
the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door.
Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at
last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
on the arm said:
865
"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
administered. Come."
866
Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission to
enter that room.
867
CHAPTER XXIII
868
Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and
on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated
with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under the
gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair on
snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre saw-
covered to the waist by a bright green quilt- the familiar, majestic
figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above
his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep
characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay
just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the
right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust
between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from
behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests,
their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments,
with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the
service. A little behind them stood the two younger princesses holding
handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest
sister, Catiche, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on
the icons, as though declaring to all that she could not answer for
herself should she glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek,
sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door
near the strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the
invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm
on the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the
purpose, and was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes
upward each time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of
piety and resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand
these sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"
869
Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently
crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued
chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the
shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna
Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she
quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre was
standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing
those around him, began crossing himself with the hand that held the
taper.
870
Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the mole,
watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained
with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing Pierre she again
began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him without
laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of
temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst
of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they
whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the
count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna
stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain
from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning
against one of the columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a
foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood the full
importance of the rite now being performed and even approved of it. He
now approached the sick man with the noiseless step of one in full
vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers raised from the green
quilt the hand that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and
reflected a moment. The sick man was given something to drink, there
was a stir around him, then the people resumed their places and the
service continued. During this interval Pierre noticed that Prince
Vasili left the chair on which he had been leaning, and- with air which
intimated that he knew what he was about and if others did not
understand him it was so much the worse for them- did not go up to the
dying man, but passed by him, joined the eldest princess, and moved
with her to the side of the room where stood the high bedstead with its
silken hangings. On leaving the bed both Prince Vasili and the princess
passed out by a back door, but returned to their places one after the
other before the service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention
to this occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having made up his
mind once for all that what he saw happening around him that evening
was in some way essential.
871
The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was
heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the
sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as before.
Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers,
among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.
872
Pierre heard her say:
873
"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
impossible..."
874
The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and servants
that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray
mane- which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight
of for a single moment during the whole service. He judged by the
cautious movements of those who crowded round the invalid chair that
they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.
875
"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the servants
say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath. Here!"
exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the bearers and
the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the weight they
were carrying were too much for them.
876
As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young man
he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the
dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised
by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray,
curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and
cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic
expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the
same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had
sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with
the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed
itself upon nothing.
877
After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had
carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched Pierre's hand
and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick man
had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just
completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His hands
were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms downward.
When Pierre came up the count was gazing straight at him, but with a
look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal man.
Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes they
must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not
knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Anna
Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick
man's hand and moving her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre,
carefully stretching his neck so as not to touch the quilt, followed
her suggestion and pressed his lips to the large boned, fleshy hand.
Neither the hand nor a single muscle of the count's face stirred. Once
more Pierre looked questioningly at Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was
to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna with her eyes indicated a chair that stood
beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were
doing right. Anna Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell
into the naively symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently
distressed that his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and
doing his utmost to look as small as possible. He looked at the count,
who still gazed at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat
down. Anna Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of
the pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed
an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's face began
to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one
side (only now did Pierre realize how near death his father was), and
from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Anna
Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's eyes, trying to guess
what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre, then to some drink, then
named Prince Vasili in an inquiring whisper, then pointed to the quilt.
The eyes and face of the sick man showed impatience. He made an effort
to look at the servant who stood constantly at the head of the bed.
878
"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up to
turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.
879
Pierre rose to help him.
880
While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether
he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless
arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at
any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's terror-stricken
face, and again at the arm, and on his face a feeble, piteous smile
appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride
his own helplessness. At sight of this smile Pierre felt an unexpected
quivering in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed
his eyes. The sick man was turned on to his side with his face to the
wall. He sighed.
881
"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."
882
Pierre went out.
883
CHAPTER XXIV
884
There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili and the
eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the
Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion
they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the princess hide
something as she whispered:
885
"I can't bear the sight of that woman."
886
"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said Prince
Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor Anna
Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."
887
To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze
below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the small
drawing room.
888
"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup of
this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of
restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre
well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and
little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not know
how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies who,
as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls
on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly
lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several times. Now
this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one small table tea
things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the middle of the
night a motley throng of people sat there, not merrymaking, but
somberly whispering, and betraying by every word and movement that they
none of them forgot what was happening and what was about to happen in
the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though he would very much have
liked to. He looked inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was
again going on tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Prince
Vasili and the eldest princess. Pierre concluded that this also was
essential, and after a short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna
was standing beside the princess, and they were both speaking in
excited whispers.
889
"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the same
state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.
890
"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment when
he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is
already prepared..."
891
Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude,
with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so
flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but he
wore the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were
saying.
892
"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases. You
know how fond the count is of her."
893
"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the two
ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid portfolio
she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is in his
writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."
894
She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to bar
her path.
895
"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je vous
en conjure..."
896
The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the
princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none
of its honeyed firmness and softness.
897
"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place in a
family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"
898
"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so loud
that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. "Why do you
remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere,
making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room? Intriguer!"
she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the portfolio.
899
But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the
portfolio, and changed her grip.
900
Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise, "this is
absurd! Come, let go I tell you."
901
The princess let go.
902
"And you too!"
903
But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.
904
"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will go
and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"
905
"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn sacrament,
allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion," said
she, turning to the young man who, having come quite close, was gazing
with astonishment at the angry face of the princess which had lost all
dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Prince Vasili.
906
"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince
Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."
907
"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
908
Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.
909
At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long and
which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged
against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out
wringing her hands.
910
"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you leave
me alone with him!"
911
Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping, quickly
caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. The eldest
princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her. A few
minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again
biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression showed an
irrepressible hatred.
912
"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
handkerchief and rushed from the room.
913
Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was
sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre
noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in
an ague.
914
"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there was in
his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it
before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am
near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death
is awful..." and he burst into tears.
915
Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet
steps.
916
"Pierre!" she said.
917
Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
918
"He is no more...."
919
Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
920
"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."
921
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could
see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned he was
fast asleep with his head on his arm.
922
In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
923
"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in
command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know
you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it
imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."
924
Pierre was silent.
925
"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been
there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle
promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But he
had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father's
wish?"
926
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of
Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying.
As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so touching that
she could not think of it without tears, and did not know which had
behaved better during those awful moments- the father who so remembered
everything and everybody at last and last and had spoken such pathetic
words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so
stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to hide it in order
not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but it does one good.
It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count and his worthy
son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest princess and Prince
Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great secret.
927
CHAPTER XXV
928
At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the old
prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow
to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to
say that there are only two sources of human vice- idleness and
superstition, and only two virtues- activity and intelligence. He
himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these two
cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry till
she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was
occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving
problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working
in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on
at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating
activity, regularity in his household was carried to the highest point
of exactitude. He always came to table under precisely the same
conditions, and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With
those about him, from his daughter to his serfs, the prince was sharp
and invariably exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he
inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted men would have
aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no influence in
political affairs, every high official appointed to the province in
which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to visit him and
waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the architect,
gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared punctually to
the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber experienced
the same feeling of respect and even fear when the enormously high
study door opened and showed the figure of a rather small old man, with
powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray eyebrows which, when
he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully
glittering eyes.
929
On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,
Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed
for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and
repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and
every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.
930
An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."
931
Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess timidly
opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the
entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after glancing round
continued his work.
932
The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The
large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around- all indicated
continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot
shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of
the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince still possessed the
tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns
of the lathe he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel,
dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching
the table, summoned his daughter. He never gave his children a
blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven)
and, regarding her tenderly and attentively, said severely:
933
"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair
with his foot.
934
"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a scratch
from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
935
The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
936
"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly,
taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above
the table, onto which he threw it.
937
At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
938
"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
still sound, yellowish teeth.
939
"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and a
timid smile.
940
"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said the
prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
third!"
941
"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still more
and holding out the letter.
942
"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing the
letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him the
exercise book containing geometrical figures.
943
"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his daughter
and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat, so that
she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age
and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these triangles
are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."
944
The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes glittering
close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was
plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her fear
would prevent her understanding any of her father's further
explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the teacher's
fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every day: the princess'
eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but was
only conscious of her stern father's withered face close to her, of his
breath and the smell of him, and could think only of how to get away
quickly to her own room to make out the problem in peace. The old man
was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily
backward and forward, made efforts to control himself and not become
vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded, and sometimes
flung the exercise book away.
945
The princess gave a wrong answer.
946
"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book
aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and
down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.
947
He drew up his chair. and continued to explain.
948
"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's lesson,
was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam! I don't
want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and you'll like
it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the nonsense out of
your head."
949
She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut
book from the high desk.
950
"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has sent
you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I have looked
at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."
951
He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
952
Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared expression
that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer.
She sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits
and which was littered with books and papers. The princess was as
untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and
eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate
friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina who had been at the
Rostovs' name-day party.
953
Julie wrote in French:
954
Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my
happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance
separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart
rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions
around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my
heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why
cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your
look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem
to see before me as I write?
955
Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the mirror
which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and
thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular
hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me," thought
the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not
flatter her friend, the princess' eyes- large, deep and luminous (it
seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)-
were so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her face
they gave her an attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But the
princess never saw the beautiful expression of her own eyes- the look
they had when she was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her
face assumed a forced unnatural expression as soon as she looked in a
glass. She went on reading:
956
All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already
abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march
to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg and it is thought
intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant
that the Corsican monster who is destroying the peace of Europe may be
overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His
goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this
war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean
young Nicholas Rostov, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain
inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess
to you, dear Mary, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for
the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to
you last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness
which one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty and,
particularly, he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and
poetic that my relations with him, transient as they were, have been
one of the sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already
suffered so much. Someday I will tell you about our parting and all
that was said then. That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are
happy not to know these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate,
for the latter are generally the stronger! I know very well that Count
Nicholas is too young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this
sweet friendship, this poetic and pure intimacy, were what my heart
needed. But enough of this! The chief news, about which all Moscow
gossips, is the death of old Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance.
Fancy! The three princesses have received very little, Prince Vasili
nothing, and it is Monsieur Pierre who has inherited all the property
and has besides been recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count
Bezukhov and possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored
that Prince Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and
that he returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
957
I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and
inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom we all used
to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count Bezukhov and the
owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to
watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by
marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward him,
though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort of
fellow. As for the past two years people have amused themselves by
finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't even know), the
matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess
Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post.
A propos of marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal
auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a
plan of marriage for you. It is neither more nor less than with Prince
Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to
someone rich and distinguee, and it is on you that his relations'
choice has fallen. I don't know what you will think of it, but I
consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very
handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to
find out about him.
958
But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and
Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though
there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it
is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give my
respects to monsieur your father and my compliments to Mademoiselle
Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
959
JULIE
960
P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
961
The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous
eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she
suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a
sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply
she wrote, also in French:
962
Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect
on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say, if I
dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if we
had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you
suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young
man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I understand such
feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of
them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian
love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is worthier,
sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a
young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like
yourself.
963
The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and my
father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late
as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
964
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He always
seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I
value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by
Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine
Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly
true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So
young, and burdened with such riches- to what temptations he will be
exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be
poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the
volume you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since
you tell me that among some good things it contains others which our
weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to
spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no
fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for
confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken
their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for
exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read
the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries
they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh
which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us
rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our
divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who
rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek
to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will
He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
965
My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me that
he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasili.
In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear
sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which
we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty
lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon me I shall try to
perform them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by
examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me for husband.
966
I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy arrival
at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief one,
however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy war
into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you
are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk all of war,
even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature- which townsfolk
consider characteristic of the country- rumors of war are heard and
painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a
heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our
people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of
the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should
have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws
of its divine Saviour, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries-
and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one
another.
967
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most Holy
Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
968
MARY
969
"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already dispatched
mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling Mademoiselle
Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r's.
She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world
a quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and
self-satisfied.
970
"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and
evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael
Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."
971
"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
him and would not have others do so."
972
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes
late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting
room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock, as the day
was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played the
clavichord.
973
CHAPTER XXVI
974
The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of
the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house
through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages- twenty
times repeated- of a sonata by Dussek.
975
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the
porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to
alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old Tikhon, wearing
a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a
whisper that the prince was sleeping, and hastily closed the door.
Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival nor any other unusual event
must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Prince
Andrew apparently knew this as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch
as if to ascertain whether his father's habits had changed since he was
at home last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned
to his wife.
976
"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room," he
said.
977
The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just
as merrily and prettily as ever.
978
"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around with
the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at
Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
979
"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by surprise."
980
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
981
"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
kissed his hand.
982
Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
983
"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let
her know."
984
"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the little
princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my sister-in-law's
friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"
985
They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound
of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped and
made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
986
The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the sound
of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who had only
met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each other's
arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened to
touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her
heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or to
laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of
music do when they hear a false note. The two women let go of one
another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other's
hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each
other on the face, and then to Prince Andrew's surprise both began to
cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle Bourienne also began to cry. Prince
Andrew evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite
natural that they should cry, and apparently it never entered their
heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.
987
"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed.
"I dreamed last night..."- "You were not expecting us?..."- "Ah! Mary,
you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."
988
"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
989
"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I did not
see you."
990
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he
told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess Mary had
turned toward her brother, and through her tears the loving, warm,
gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment,
rested on Prince Andrew's face.
991
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and
drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had
had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in her
condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left
all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have
to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that Kitty
Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Mary,
a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess Mary was
still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full
of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of
thought independent of her sister-in-law's words. In the midst of a
description of the last Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:
992
"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.
993
Lise sighed too.
994
"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.
995
"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion..."
996
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her figure.
997
"Is it certain?" she said.
998
The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said: "Yes,
quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."
999
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's
and unexpectedly again began to cry.
1000
"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?"
1001
"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
answered the princess joyfully.
1002
"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he
was aware of his weaknesses.
1003
"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my
geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her lessons in
geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.
1004
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the old
prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his father.
The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his
son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while he
dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in old-fashioned
style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Prince
Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the contemptuous
look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face
with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting on a large
leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his
head to Tikhon.
1005
"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
holding fast to plait, would allow.
1006
"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this
he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he held
out his cheek.
1007
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used
to say that a nap "after dinner was silver- before dinner, golden.") He
cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy
eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father on the spot
indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's favorite topic-
making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly of
Bonaparte.
1008
"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is
pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his father's
face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"
1009
"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from
morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."
1010
"Thank God," said his son smiling.
1011
"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued, returning
to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to fight
Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'"
1012
Prince Andrew smiled.
1013
"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile that
showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from loving
and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle down!"
1014
"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to see
whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand. "The house
for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there and show her
over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's their woman's way!
I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About Mikhelson's army I
understand- Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous expedition.... But what's
the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What about
Austria?" said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the
room followed by Tikhon, who ran after him, handing him different
articles of clothing. "What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"
1015
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began- at first
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit
changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on- to explain
the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an
army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring
her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that
army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two hundred and
twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to
operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty
1016
thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and how a
total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the French from
different sides. The old prince did not evince the least interest
during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to it
continued to dress while walking about, and three times unexpectedly
interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white one, the white
one!"
1017
This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted.
Another time he interrupted, saying:
1018
"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head reproachfully
said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."
1019
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old
age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand
reviendra."15
15
"Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."
1020
His son only smiled.
1021
"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only
telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now, not
worse than this one."
1022
"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
meditatively and rapidly:
1023
"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."
1024
CHAPTER XXVII
1025
At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who by
a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though the
position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly
not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who generally
kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even
important government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected
Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on
his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are
equals, and had more than once impressed on his daughter that Michael
Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or I." At dinner the prince
usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to
anyone else.
1026
In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen- one
behind each chair- stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door
by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at a large
gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the Princes
Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted
portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate)
of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged descendant of Rurik and
ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew, looking again at that
genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks
at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.
1027
"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
come up to him.
1028
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not understand
what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired her with
reverence and was beyond question.
1029
"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew. "Fancy,
with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"
1030
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily
as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his
manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the
great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from
the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and
rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar
enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in
all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on
the back of her neck.
1031
"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into her
eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit down, sit
down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"
1032
He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman moved
the chair for her.
1033
"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded figure.
"You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"
1034
He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only
and not with his eyes.
1035
"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he
said.
1036
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She
was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,
and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances,
and she became still more animated and chattered away giving him
greetings from various people and retailing the town gossip.
1037
"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has cried
her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.
1038
As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more sternly,
and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a
definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael Ivanovich.
1039
"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of
it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling
me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I never
thought much of him."
1040
Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a peg
on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at
the young prince, wondering what would follow.
1041
"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to the
architect.
1042
And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and the
generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced not
only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the
A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an insignificant
little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any
Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced
that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war,
but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were
playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily bore with
his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and listened to
him with evident pleasure.
1043
"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov himself
fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not know how to
escape?"
1044
"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled the
devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what
chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and
your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call in
the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The German,
Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman,
Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau
to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the Potemkins,
Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows have all lost
your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you, but we'll see
what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great commander among them!
Hm!..."
1045
"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince Andrew,
"I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may laugh as
much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great generall"
1046
"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says same thing."
1047
"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.
1048
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
1049
"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody
has beaten the Germans. They beat no one- except one another. He made
his reputation fighting them."
1050
And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son
made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He
listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this
old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and
discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and
political events.
1051
"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state of
affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't sleep at
night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown his
skill?" he concluded.
1052
"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.
1053
"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he exclaimed
in excellent French.
1054
"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"
1055
"Dieu sait quand reviendra"... hummed the prince out of tune and, with
a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
1056
The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of the
dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.
1057
"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I am
afraid of him."
1058
"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.
1059
CHAPTER XXVIII
1060
Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not altering
his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little princess was in
her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling coat without
epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to
him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put
in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always
kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted
with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a saber- a present from his
father who had brought it from the siege of Ochakov. All these
traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in very good order: new,
clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.
1061
When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable
of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments
one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince Andrew's face
looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him he paced
briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him
and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was
he sad at leaving his wife?- perhaps both, but evidently he did not
wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he
hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the cover
of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable
expression. It was the heavy tread of Princess Mary that he heard.
1062
"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she had
apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another talk with
you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not angry
with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha," she added, as if to
explain such a question.
1063
She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
Andrusha- the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
childhood.
1064
"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a smile.
1065
"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting down
on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a dear,
merry child. I have grown so fond of her."
1066
Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical and
contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.
1067
"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them,
Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated in
society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter
into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout
pardonner.16 Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what
she has been used to, to be parted from her husband and be left alone
the country, in her condition! It's very hard."
16
To understand all is to forgive all.
1068
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at those
we think we thoroughly understand.
1069
"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he
replied.
1070
"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other life,
and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young society
woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her life,
all alone- for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what poor
resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society.
There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."
1071
"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince Andrew.
1072
"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be pitied.
She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her, and she's
even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more
so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She and Michael
Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind,
because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: 'We
don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the
good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless after
losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes
her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
splendidly."
1073
"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes makes
things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked suddenly.
1074
Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
1075
"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.
1076
"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting very
trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
father in order to puzzle or test his sister.
1077
"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of intellectual
pride," said the princess, following the train of her own thoughts
rather than the trend of the conversation- "and that's a great sin. How
can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling except
veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so contented
and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I am."
1078
Her brother shook his head incredulously.
1079
"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is
as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing that
makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a
monk he received and had a long talk with."
1080
"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your powder,"
said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
1081
"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me. Andrew..."
she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a great favor to ask
of you."
1082
"What is it, dear?"
1083
"No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble and
is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were the
subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was
granted.
1084
She looked timidly at her brother.
1085
"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew, as
if guessing what it was about.
1086
"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as you
please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out what
she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"
1087
"Of course. What is it?"
1088
"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
never take it off. Do you promise?"
1089
"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck... To
please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the pained
expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he repented and
added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."
1090
"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring you to
Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a voice
trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her
brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour in a
gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
1091
She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
1092
"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."
1093
Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit
up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her
brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew
understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of
tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
1094
"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down again
on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
1095
"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you always
used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so sweet, so
good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."
1096
"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or blamed
her. Why do you say all this to me?"
1097
Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as if
she felt guilty.
1098
"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And I
am sorry for that," he went on.
1099
The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to
say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the little
princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings
about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had complained of
her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had
fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
1100
"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and never
shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself with
anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in whatever
circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if
you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this
is so I don't know..."
1101
As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed her
forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.
1102
"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake and I'll come in
a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take these
away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."
1103
Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him to
give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been
answered."
1104
"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come immediately."
1105
On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected one
wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne smiling
sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and
artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.
1106
"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
blushing and dropping her eyes.
1107
Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly
came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead
and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the
Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his
sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying
one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as
usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make
up for lost time.
1108
"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her
mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age....
Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"
1109
This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh Prince
Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of others some
five times. He entered the room softly. The little princess, plump and
rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking
incessantly, repeating Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases.
Prince Andrew came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested
after their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.
1110
The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to the
young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in the
reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne, Princess
Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been called to his
father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All
were waiting for them to come out.
1111
When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his
son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.
1112
"Going?" And he went on writing.
1113
"I've come to say good-by."
1114
"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"
1115
"What do you thank me for?"
1116
"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron strings. The
Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went on writing, so
that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have anything to say,
say it. These two things can be done together," he added.
1117
"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your hands..."
1118
"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."
1119
"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur.... Let
him be here...."
1120
The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his
stern eyes on his son.
1121
"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."
1122
"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what he was
writing. "I'll do it."
1123
He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
laugh.
1124
"It's a bad business, eh?"
1125
"What is bad, Father?"
1126
"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
1127
"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.
1128
"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like that;
one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you know
it yourself."
1129
He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked
straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see through
him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.
1130
The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. The
old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and
throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed
rapidity.
1131
"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your mind
easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.
1132
Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his
father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his
son.
1133
"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done shall
be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.17 I
have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember and
like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all right-
serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone if he
is in disfavor. Now come here."
17
Kutuzov.
1134
He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son
was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised the
lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his
bold, tall, close handwriting.
1135
"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond and
a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of Suvorov's
wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read
when I am gone. You will find them useful."
1136
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long time
yet. He felt that he must not say it.
1137
"I will do it all, Father," he said.
1138
"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt me,
your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous
voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not behaved like
a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"
1139
"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a smile.
1140
The old man was silent.
1141
"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm killed and
if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you- as I said
yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."
1142
"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.
1143
They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of
the old prince's face.
1144
"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry voice,
opening his door.
1145
"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment at
the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
1146
Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
1147
"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.
1148
And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,: "Now go
through your performance."
1149
"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and looking
with dismay at her husband.
1150
He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
1151
He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her
face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
1152
"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand and
kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
1153
The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne chafing
her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law, still looked
with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Prince
Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From
the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of the old man
angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince Andrew gone when the study
door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white
dressing gown looked out.
1154
"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
the door.
1155
BOOK TWO: 1805
1156
CHAPTER I
1157
In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and towns
of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly arriving
from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and burdening
the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
1158
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just
reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be
inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance
of the locality and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled
roofs, and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the
inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not
Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
1159
On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received that
the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march. Though
the words of the order were not clear to the regimental commander, and
the question arose whether the troops were to be in marching order or
not, it was decided at a consultation between the battalion commanders
to present the regiment in parade order, on the principle that it is
always better to "bow too low than not bow low enough." So the
soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending and cleaning all
night long without closing their eyes, while the adjutants and company
commanders calculated and reckoned, and by morning the regiment-
instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it had been on its last
march the day before- presented a well-ordered array of two thousand
men each of whom knew his place and his duty, had every button and
every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness. And not only
externally was all in order, but had it pleased the commander in chief
to look under the uniforms he would have found on every man a clean
shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of articles, "awl,
soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only one circumstance
concerning which no one could be at ease. It was the state of the
soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots were in holes. But this
defect was not due to any fault of the regimental commander, for in
spite of repeated demands boots had not been issued by the Austrian
commissariat, and the regiment had marched some seven hundred miles.
1160
The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider from
chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new uniform
showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold epaulettes
which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive shoulders. He
had the air of a man happily performing one of the most solemn duties
of his life. He walked about in front of the line and at every step
pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was plain that the
commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and that his whole mind
was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to indicate that, besides
military matters, social interests and the fair sex occupied no small
part of his thoughts.
1161
"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the battalion
commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain that they both
felt happy). "We had our hands full last night. However, I think the
regiment is not a bad one, eh?"
1162
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
1163
"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."
1164
"What?" asked the commander.
1165
At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had been
posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an aide-decamp
followed by a Cossack.
1166
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.
1167
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the day
before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army of
the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering this
junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of his
view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the
troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the
regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the
commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know these
circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that the
men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and that the
commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On hearing this the
regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged his shoulders,
and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
1168
"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.
1169
"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was said 'on
the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully to the
battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping resolutely
forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice accustomed to
command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?" he asked the
aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently relating to the
personage he was referring to.
1170
"In an hour's time, I should say."
1171
"Shall we have time to change clothes?"
1172
"I don't know, General...."
1173
The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered the
soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders ran
off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the
greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares
that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and
stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and
fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and
pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and
drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.
1174
In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had become
gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his jerky
steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a distance.
1175
"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander of the
third company!"
1176
"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!... commander to
the general... third company to the commander." The words passed along
the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing officer.
1177
When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination in a
cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer
appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged man
and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on his
toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the uneasiness of a
schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not learned. Spots
appeared on his nose, the redness of which was evidently due to
intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The general looked the
captain up and down as he came up panting, slackening his pace as he
approached.
1178
"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and
pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat
of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been
after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place? Eh?
I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade.... Eh...?"
1179
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
1180
"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as a
Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.
1181
"Your excellency..."
1182
"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows."
1183
"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to
the ranks," said the captain softly.
1184
"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier? If
a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the others."
1185
"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."
1186
"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says
a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I
beg you to dress your men decently."
1187
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his jerky
steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display of
anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further excuse
for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished badge, at
another because his line was not straight, he reached the third
company.
1188
"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted the
commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there were still
five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray uniform.
1189
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with his
clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.
1190
"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his coat... the
ras..." he did not finish.
1191
"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..." Dolokhov
hurriedly interrupted.
1192
"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"
1193
"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
tones.
1194
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became silent,
angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
1195
"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as he
turned away.
1196
CHAPTER II
1197
"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.
1198
The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the
stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle, righted
himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute countenance,
opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment fluttered like
a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.
1199
"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking voice
which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment, and welcome
for the approaching chief.
1200
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a
high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs and
drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped the
suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian general,
in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian black ones.
The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov and the Austrian
general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled slightly as
treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as if those two
thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the regimental commander
did not exist.
1201
The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as with
a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence the
feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment roared,
"Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all became
silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment moved; then he
and the general in white, accompanied by the suite, walked between the
ranks.
1202
From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief
and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and
from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals, bending
forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and from the
way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the commander in
chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a subordinate with
even greater zeal than his duty as a commander. Thanks to the
strictness and assiduity of its commander the regiment, in comparison
with others that had reached Braunau at the same time, was in splendid
condition. There were only 217 sick and stragglers. Everything was in
good order except the boots.
1203
Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war, sometimes
also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several times shook his
head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian general with an
expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming anyone, but
could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was. The
regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to miss
a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.
Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to
be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen talked
among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the commander
in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince Bolkonski. Beside
him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer, extremely stout,
with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes. Nesvitski could
hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar officer who
walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and without a smile
or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes, watched the regimental
commander's back and mimicked his every movement. Each time the
commander started and bent forward, the hussar started and bent forward
in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed and nudged the others to
make them look at the wag.
1204
Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which were
starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the third
company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected this,
involuntarily came closer to him.
1205
"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had been
reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
1206
One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself more
than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the regimental
commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed him he drew
himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not have sustained
it had the commander in chief continued to look at him, and so Kutuzov,
who evidently understood his case and wished him nothing but good,
quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile flitting over his
scarred and puffy face.
1207
"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you satisfied
with him?" he asked the regimental commander.
1208
And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected in the hussar
officer as in a looking glass- started, moved forward, and answered:
"Highly satisfied, your excellency!"
1209
"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking away
from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."
1210
The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this and did
not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of the red-nosed
captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his expression and pose
with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help laughing. Kutuzov
turned round. The officer evidently had complete control of his face,
and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a grimace and then assume
a most serious, deferential, and innocent expression.
1211
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently trying
to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from among the
suite and said in French:
1212
"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the
ranks in this regiment."
1213
"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.
1214
Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat, did
not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired soldier,
with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks, went up to
the commander in chief, and presented arms.
1215
"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.
1216
"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.
1217
"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your duty.
The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you deserve well."
1218
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as boldly as
they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by their
expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates a
commander in chief so widely from a private.
1219
"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"
1220
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned
away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said to
him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he was
weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away and
went to the carriage.
1221
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their appointed
quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and clothes
and to rest after their hard marches.
1222
"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the regimental
commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
1223
quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.
(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily
over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's
service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.
1224
"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the captain,
his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where two front
teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end of a gun
at Ismail.
1225
"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him- he may be quite easy.
And tell me, please- I've been meaning to ask- how is to ask- how is he
behaving himself, and in general..."
1226
"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your excellency;
but his character..." said Timokhin.
1227
"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.
1228
"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day he
is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a wild
beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."
1229
"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one must
have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
connections... Well, then, you just..."
1230
"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile that he
understood his commander's wish.
1231
"Well, of course, of course!"
1232
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and, reining
in his horse, said to him:
1233
"After the next affair... epaulettes."
1234
Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the mocking
smile on his lips change.
1235
"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup of
vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could hear.
"I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company and
overtook the next one.
1236
"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
1237
"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
1238
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected the
soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could be
heard on every side.
1239
"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"
1240
"And so he is! Quite blind!"
1241
"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands... he
noticed everything..."
1242
"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."
1243
"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
they do the guns."
1244
"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You were
near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."
1245
"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't know!
The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are putting
them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte will
begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool. You'd
better listen more carefully!"
1246
"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
cooked before we reach our quarters."
1247
"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"
1248
"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend! Ah,
well, never mind, here you are."
1249
"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four miles
without eating."
1250
"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
and are drawn along."
1251
"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all seemed
to be Poles- all under the Russian crown- but here they're all regular
Germans."
1252
"Singers to the front " came the captain's order.
1253
And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and flourishing
his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing with the
words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and concluding: "On then,
brothers, on to glory, led by Father Kamenski." This song had been
composed in the Turkish campaign and now being sung in Austria, the
only change being that the words "Father Kamenski" were replaced by
"Father Kutuzov."
1254
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms as
if flinging something to the ground, the drummer- a lean, handsome
soldier of forty- looked sternly at the singers and screwed up his
eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on him, he
raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but precious
object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds, suddenly
flung it down and began:
1255
"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"
1256
"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the
front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his shoulders
and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone. The soldiers,
swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously, marched with long
steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the creaking of springs,
and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard. Kutuzov and his suite were
returning to the town. The commander in chief made a sign that the men
should continue to march at ease, and he and all his suite showed
pleasure at the sound of the singing and the sight of the dancing
soldier and the gay and smartly marching men. In the second file from
the right flank, beside which the carriage passed the company, a
blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted notice. It was Dolokhov
marching with particular grace and boldness in time to the song and
looking at those driving past as if he pitied all who were not at that
moment marching with the company. The hussar cornet of Kutuzov's suite
who had mimicked the regimental commander, fell back from the carriage
and rode up to Dolokhov.
1257
Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to the
wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a private
and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov had spoken
to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the cordiality of an old
friend.
1258
"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making his
horse keep pace with the company.
1259
"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."
1260
The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
Dolokhov's reply.
1261
"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.
1262
"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto the
staff?"
1263
"I was attached; I'm on duty."
1264
Both were silent.
1265
"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the
song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
Their conversation would probably have been different but for the
effect of that song.
1266
"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.
1267
"The devil only knows! They say so."
1268
"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
demanded.
1269
"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
Zherkov.
1270
"Why, have you too much money?"
1271
"Do come."
1272
"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
reinstated."
1273
"Well, that's only till the first engagement."
1274
"We shall see."
1275
They were again silent.
1276
"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the staff..."
1277
Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg- I'll
take it!"
1278
"Well, never mind; I only..."
1279
"And I only..."
1280
"Good-by."
1281
"Good health..."
1282
"It's a long, long way.
1283
Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly from
foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down, galloped
past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping time to the
song.
1284
CHAPTER III
1285
On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into
his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in command
of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the room with
the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of the
Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread out.
1286
"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this exclamation
he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with the
conversation in French.
1287
"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. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
General."
1288
And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
point."
1289
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to
reply in the same tone.
1290
"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by His
Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the splendid
Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have been
accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.
1291
Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
1292
"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with which
His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine that the
Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a leader as General
Mack, have by now already gained a decisive victory and no longer need
our aid," said Kutuzov.
1293
The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an Austrian
defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the unfavorable rumors
that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an Austrian victory
sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on blandly smiling with the
same expression, which seemed to say that he had a right to suppose so.
And, in fact, the last letter he had received from Mack's army informed
him of a victory and stated strategically the position of the army was
very favorable.
1294
"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew. "Please
have a look at it"- and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about the
corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following
passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:
1295
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men with
which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech. Also, as
we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage of
commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not cross
the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line of
communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the Imperial
Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in conjunction
with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the fate he
deserves.
1296
Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at the
member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
1297
"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have done
with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round at
the aide-de-camp.
1298
"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is
one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he
said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French out
of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements of the
Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."
1299
Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from the
first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have
liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
1300
Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia, he
had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his face,
in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of his former
affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man who has time
to think of the impression he makes on others, but is occupied with
agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed more satisfaction
with himself and those around him, his smile and glance were brighter
and more attractive.
1301
Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very kindly,
promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the other
adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more serious
commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade, Prince
Andrew's father.
1302
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his industry,
firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to have such a
subordinate by me.
1303
On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great things
of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with them
Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority, disliked
him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But among
these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that they
respected and even feared him.
1304
Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers in
his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp on
duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
1305
"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.
1306
"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
advancing."
1307
"And why is it?"
1308
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
1309
"Any news from Mack?"
1310
"No."
1311
"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."
1312
"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
1313
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
Prince Andrew stopped short.
1314
"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general speaking
quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and advancing
straight toward the inner door.
1315
"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly up
to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom shall I
announce?"
1316
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
1317
"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.
1318
The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He took out
a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out the leaf,
gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and threw himself
into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if asking, "Why do they
look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched his neck as if he
intended to say something, but immediately, with affected indifference,
began to hum to himself, producing a queer sound which immediately
broke off. The door of the private room opened and Kutuzov appeared in
the doorway. The general with the bandaged head bent forward as though
running away from some danger, and, making long, quick strides with his
thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
1319
"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.
1320
Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a wave
and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head respectfully,
closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before him, and
closed the door himself behind him.
1321
The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been beaten
and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be correct.
Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various directions with
orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had hitherto been
inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
1322
Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief interest
lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack and heard the
details of his disaster he understood that half the campaign was lost,
understood all the difficulties of the Russian army's position, and
vividly imagined what awaited it and the part he would have to play.
Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the thought of the
humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's time he might,
perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian encounter with the
French since Suvorov met them. He feared that Bonaparte's genius might
outweigh all the courage of the Russian troops, and at the same time
could not admit the idea of his hero being disgraced.
1323
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward his
room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the
corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag
Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.
1324
"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
face and glittering eyes.
1325
"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.
1326
Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward them
from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian general who on
Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the Russian army, and
the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived the previous evening.
There was room enough in the wide corridor for the generals to pass the
three officers quite easily, but Zherkov, pushing Nesvitski aside with
his arm, said in a breathless voice,
1327
"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
make way!"
1328
The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
1329
"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and addressing
the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate you."
1330
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with the
other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
1331
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing the
seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
1332
"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived, quite
well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing with a
beaming smile to his head.
1333
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
1334
"Gott, wie naiv!"18 said he angrily, after he had gone a few
steps.
18
"Good God, what simplicity!"
1335
Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.
1336
"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said sharply,
with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent your doing
so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in my presence, I
will teach you to behave yourself."
1337
Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they
gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.
1338
"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.
1339
"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski, and
taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to say.
1340
"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to soothe
him.
1341
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers serving
our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and grieving at
the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely lackeys who care
nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille hommes massacres et
l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la le mot pour
rire,"19 he said, as if strengthening his views by this French
sentence. "C' est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet individu dont
vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour vous.20
Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he added in
Russian- but pronouncing the word with a French accent- having noticed
that Zherkov could still hear him.
19
"Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,
and you find that a cause for jesting!"
20
"It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom you
have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."
1342
He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he
turned and went out of the corridor.
1343
CHAPTER IV
1344
The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in
the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet Rostov,
ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had lived with the
squadron commander.
1345
On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the news
of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this squadron was
proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at cards all night,
had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early in the morning from a
foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet uniform, with a jerk to his
horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg over the saddle with a
supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in the stirrup as if
loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang down and called to
his orderly.
1346
"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted young
people show to everyone when they are happy.
1347
"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his head.
1348
"Mind, walk him up and down well!"
1349
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had already
thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's head. It was
evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that it paid to
serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his flank, and
lingered for a moment.
1350
"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork in
hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his face
immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon gut
Morgen!"21 he said winking with a merry smile, evidently
pleased to greet the young man.
21
"A very good morning! A very good morning!"
1351
"Schon fleissig?"22 said Rostov with the same gay brotherly
smile which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch
Russen! Kaiser Alexander hoch!"23 said he, quoting words often
repeated by the German landlord.
22
"Busy already?"
23
"Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah for
Emperor Alexander!"
1352
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
waving it above his head cried:
1353
"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"24
24
"And hurrah for the whole world!"
1354
Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and ctied laughing,
"Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German cleaning his
cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging for hay had any
reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with joyful delight and
brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of their mutual affection,
and parted smiling, the German returning to his cowshed and Rostov
going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.
1355
"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly, whom
all the regiment knew for a rogue.
1356
"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing," answered
Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early to brag about
it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's lost and will come
back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"
1357
"Yes, bring some."
1358
Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!" said he.
"Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw Denisov
coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face, sparkling black
eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore an unfastened cloak,
wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a crumpled shako on the back
of his head. He came up to the porch gloomily, hanging his head.
1359
"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"
1360
"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.
1361
"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.
1362
"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and have
seen Fraulein Mathilde."
1363
"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a damned
fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill luck! Such ill
luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on. Hullo there! Tea!"
1364
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his
thick tangled black hair.
1365
"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed "the
rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both hands.
"Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."
1366
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in his
fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while he
continued to shout.
1367
"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles it;
gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"
1368
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it away.
Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked cheerfully
with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.
1369
"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one to do
but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's there?"
he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy boots and the
clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a respectful cough.
1370
"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.
1371
Denisov's face puckered still more.
1372
"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in it.
"Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove the
purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the quartermaster.
1373
Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new coins
in separate piles, began counting them.
1374
"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came Denisov's
voice from the next room.
1375
"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping voice,
and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same squadron, entered
the room.
1376
Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little hand
which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been transferred
from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very well in the
regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him and was
unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to the man.
1377
"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook was
a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)
1378
The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in the
face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
1379
"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.
1380
"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the horse
for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half that
sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he added.
1381
"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and show
you what kind of rivet to use."
1382
"Yes, please do," said Rostov.
1383
"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
you'll thank me for."
1384
"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
1385
In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the threshold
facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing Rostov,
Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder with his
thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned and gave a
shudder of disgust.
1386
"Ugh! I don't like that fellow"' he said, regardless of the
quartermaster's presence.
1387
Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but what's
one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to Telyanin.
1388
Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had left
him, rubbing his small white hands.
1389
"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
entered.
1390
"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting up and
looking carelessly about him.
1391
"I have."
1392
"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about
yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"
1393
"Not yet. But where are you off to?"
1394
"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.
1395
They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
1396
When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on the
table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a sheet of
paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am witing to
her."
1397
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.
1398
"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We are
childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God, one is
pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send him to the
devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to him not in
the least abashed.
1399
"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the
quartermaster for the money."
1400
Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
1401
"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.
1402
"Seven new and three old imperials."
1403
"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you sca'cwow?
Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.
1404
"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
Rostov, blushing.
1405
"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled Denisov.
1406
"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will offend
me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.
1407
"No, I tell you."
1408
And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
1409
"Where have you put it, Wostov?"
1410
"Under the lower pillow."
1411
"It's not there."
1412
Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
1413
"That's a miwacle."
1414
"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the pillows one
at a time and shaking them.
1415
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
1416
"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you kept
it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it just here.
Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.
1417
"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."
1418
"But it isn't?..."
1419
"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
it. Feel in your pockets."
1420
"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov, "but I
remember putting it there."
1421
Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and under
the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of the
room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
Denisov glanced at Rostov.
1422
"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."
1423
Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and instantly
dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested somewhere
below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not draw breath.
1424
"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant and
yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.
1425
"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!" shouted
Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man with a
threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you, I'll flog
you all."
1426
Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled on
his saber, and put on his cap.
1427
"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
1428
"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov, going
toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused, thought a
moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted at, seized his
arm.
1429
"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood out
like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The purse is
here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."
1430
"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
went to the door.
1431
"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov, rushing at
the cadet to restrain him.
1432
But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
face.
1433
"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling voice.
"There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it is not
so, then..."
1434
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
1435
"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words Rostov
heard.
1436
Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.
1437
"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the cadet's
troubled face.
1438
"No, nothing."
1439
"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.
1440
The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.
1441
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish of
sausages and a bottle of wine.
1442
"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and raising his
eyebrows.
1443
"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;
and he sat down at the nearest table.
1444
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in the
room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of knives
and the munching of the lieutenant.
1445
When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a double
purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white, turned-up
fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his eyebrows gave it to
the waiter.
1446
"Please be quick," he said.
1447
The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.
1448
"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost inaudible,
voice.
1449
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him the
purse.
1450
"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly pale, and
added, "Look at it, young man."
1451
Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in it, and
looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his usual way
and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.
1452
"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these wretched
little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well, let me have
it, young man, I'm going."
1453
Rostov did not speak.
1454
"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite decently
here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."
1455
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go of
it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into the
pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his mouth
slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in my
pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."
1456
"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted brows
he glanced into Rostov's eyes.
1457
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to
Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.
1458
"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took it..."
he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.
1459
"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.
1460
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an entreaty for
pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of doubt fell
from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to pity the
miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun had to be
completed.
1461
"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered
Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room. "We
must have an explanation..."
1462
"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.
1463
"I..."
1464
Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not
rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.
1465
"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
mother!..."
1466
Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced his
steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you do it?"
1467
"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
1468
"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take the
money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
1469
CHAPTER V
1470
That same evening there was an animated discussion among the squadron's
officers in Denisov's quarters.
1471
"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!" said
a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and many
wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
excitement.
1472
The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks for
affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
1473
"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on
duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."
1474
"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted the
staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache. "You
tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an officer has
stolen..."
1475
"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of other
officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but I am not
a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that here one
would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so let him
give me satisfaction..."
1476
"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the
point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet to
demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"
1477
Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered
the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.
1478
"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel
was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."
1479
"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."
1480
"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and must
apologize."
1481
"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.
1482
"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
but to the whole regiment- all of us- you're to blame all round. The
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of one
scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like that. And
Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what was not true.
It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear fellow? You landed
yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth the thing over, some
conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish to make the whole
affair public. You are offended at being put on duty a bit, but why not
apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever Bogdanich may be,
anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel! You're quick at taking
offense, but you don't mind disgracing the whole regiment!" The staff
captain's voice began to tremble. "You have been in the regiment next
to no time, my lad, you're here today and tomorrow you'll be appointed
adjutant somewhere and can snap your fingers when it is said 'There are
thieves among the Pavlograd officers!' But it's not all the same to us!
Am I not right, Denisov? It's not the same!"
1483
Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked with
his glittering black eyes at Rostov.
1484
"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued the
staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and, God
willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of the
regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old fellow! And
all this is not right, it's not right! You may take offense or not but
I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"
1485
And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.
1486
"That's twue, devil take it" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
Wostov, now then!"
1487
Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one officer
and then at the other.
1488
"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand. You're
wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of the
regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me the honor
of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame, to blame all
round. Well, what else do you want?..."
1489
"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning round and
clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.
1490
"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."
1491
"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"
1492
"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me," said
Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I can't,
do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little boy asking
forgiveness?"
1493
Denisov began to laugh.
1494
"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay for
your obstinacy," said Kirsten.
1495
"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling. I
can't..."
1496
"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has become
of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.
1497
"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list
tomowwow," muttered Denisov.
1498
"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said the
staff captain.
1499
"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!" shouted
Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.
1500
Just then Zherkov entered the room.
1501
"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
1502
"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
whole army."
1503
"It's not true!"
1504
"I've seen him myself!"
1505
"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"
1506
"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
did you come here?"
1507
"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just
come out of a hot bath."
1508
"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."
1509
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.
1510
"We're going into action, gentlemen!"
1511
"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"
1512
CHAPTER VI
1513
Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges over
the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October 23 the
Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the Russian
baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were defiling
through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
1514
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,
and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects
could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed houses,
its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed jostling
masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels, an
island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the
confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky
left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic
background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on the
other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be discerned.
1515
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in command of
the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the country through
his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who had been sent to
the rearguard by the commander in chief, was sitting on the trail of a
gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied him had handed him a knapsack
and a flask, and Nesvitski was treating some officers to pies and real
doppelkummel. The officers gladly gathered round him, some on their
knees, some squatting Turkish fashion on the wet grass.
1516
"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's a
fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski was
saying.
1517
"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased to
be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely place!
We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a splendid
house!"
1518
"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining the
countryside- "See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look there
in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging something.
They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident approval.
1519
"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like," added he,
munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be to slip in
over there."
1520
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed
and gleamed.
1521
"That would be fine, gentlemen!"
1522
The officers laughed.
1523
"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls among
them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"
1524
"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.
1525
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out something to
the general, who looked through his field glass.
1526
"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the field
glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired on at
the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"
1527
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and from
their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant report of
a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the crossing.
1528
Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
1529
"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.
1530
"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him, "our men
have been wasting time."
1531
"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.
1532
"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order that
had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that they
are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."
1533
"Very good," answered Nesvitski.
1534
He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the knapsack
and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
1535
"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who watched
him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the hill.
1536
"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said
the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to
pass the time."
1537
"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.
1538
In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and began
loading.
1539
"One!" came the command.
1540
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little smoke
showing the spot where it burst.
1541
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone got
up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as plainly
visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of the
approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came fully
out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the solitary shot
and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a single joyous and
spirited impression.
1542
CHAPTER VII
1543
Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge, where
there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who had
alighted from his horse and whose big body was body was jammed against
the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood a few
steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each time Prince
Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed him back again
and pressed him against the railings, and all he could do was to smile.
1544
"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!
You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"
1545
But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted at
the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to the
left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder to
shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a dense
mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the rapid, noisy
little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying round the piles of
the bridge chased each other along. Looking on the bridge he saw
equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder straps, covered
shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and, under the shakos, faces
with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and listless tired expressions,
and feet that moved through the sticky mud that covered the planks of
the bridge. Sometimes through the monotonous waves of men, like a fleck
of white foam on the waves of the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with
a type of face different from that of the men, squeezed his way along;
sometimes like a chip of wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot,
an orderly, or a townsman was carried through the waves of infantry;
and sometimes like a log floating down the river, an officers' or
company's baggage wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on
all sides, moved across the bridge.
1546
"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are there
many more of you to come?"
1547
"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat, with
a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
1548
"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now," said
the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to scratch
yourself."
1549
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a cart.
1550
"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an orderly,
running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
1551
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry soldiers who
had evidently been drinking.
1552
"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt end
of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said gaily,
with a wide swing of his arm.
1553
"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud
laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who
had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
1554
"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll all
be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
1555
"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young soldier
with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I felt like
dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that frightened!" said he,
as if bragging of having been frightened.
1556
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had gone
before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a German, and
seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine brindled cow
with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A woman with an
unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl with bright red
cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently these fugitives
were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes of all the
soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was passing at
foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two young ones.
Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly thoughts
about the women.
1557
"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"
1558
"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German, who,
angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast eyes.
1559
"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"
1560
"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"
1561
"I have seen as much before now, mate!"
1562
"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
1563
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
1564
"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
1565
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on the
bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed. When
they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with the same
kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens, the horses of
a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the bridge, and the whole
crowd had to wait.
1566
"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the
soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?
It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed in
too"- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men looked at
one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the bridge.
1567
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
something big, that splashed into the water.
1568
"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly, looking
round at the sound.
1569
"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.
1570
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon ball.
1571
"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of
the way! Make way!"
1572
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make way
for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and
those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed
still harder from behind.
1573
"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from behind
him.
1574
Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but separated
by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red and shaggy,
with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak hanging jauntily
over his shoulder.
1575
"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a small
bare hand as red as his face.
1576
"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"
1577
"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his white
teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which twitched
its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting white foam
from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his hoofs, and
apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider let him. "What
is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of the way!... Let us
pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart! I'll hack you with my
saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber from its scabbard and
flourishing it
1578
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
Denisov joined Nesvitski.
1579
"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
ridden up to him.
1580
"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov. "They
keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to fight,
let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."
1581
"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's new
cloak and saddlecloth.
1582
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that diffused
a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.
1583
"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth, and
scented myself."
1584
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the
determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through to
the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the order,
and having done this he rode back.
1585
Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to
emerge on his side of it.
1586
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past them
in regular order.
1587
"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.
1588
"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked
another.
1589
"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose prancing
horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
1590
"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the mud
off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more like a
bird than a man."
1591
"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look fine,"
said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent under the
weight of his knapsack.
1592
"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!" the
hussar shouted back.
1593
CHAPTER VIII
1594
The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible from
the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which the
river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile away. At
the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of our
Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the high
ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These were the
French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at a trot. All
the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they tried to talk
of other things and to look in other directions, thought only of what
was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking at the patches
appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the enemy's troops. The
weather had cleared again since noon and the sun was descending
brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around it. It was calm, and
at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of the enemy could be heard
from the hill. There was no one now between the squadron and the enemy
except a few scattered skirmishers. An empty space of some seven
hundred yards was all that separated them. The enemy ceased firing, and
that stern, threatening, inaccessible, and intangible line which
separates two hostile armies was all the more clearly felt.
1595
"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line dividing
the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and death. And
what is there? Who is there?- there beyond that field, that tree, that
roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to know. You fear
and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner or later it must
be crossed and you will have to find out what is there, just as you
will inevitably have to learn what lies the other side of death. But
you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and are surrounded by
other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So thinks, or at any
rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the enemy, and that feeling
gives a particular glamour and glad keenness of impression to
everything that takes place at such moments.
1596
On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon rose, and
a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron. The
officers who had been standing together rode off to their places. The
hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence fell on the
whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and at the
squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second and a third
cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the hussars, but
the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads of the
horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not look
round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of command, the
whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so different,
holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the stirrups and
sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads glanced at
one another, curious to see their comrades' impression. Every face,
from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common expression of
conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and mouth. The
quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if threatening to
punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball flew past. Rostov
on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome horse despite its
game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy called up before a large
audience for an examination in which he feels sure he will distinguish
himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear, bright expression,
as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under fire. But despite
himself, on his face too that same indication of something new and
stern showed round the mouth.
1597
"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! Look at
me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning
his horse in front of the squadron.
1598
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole short
sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in which he
held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did,
especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he was
only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds
when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his
good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the
saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a
hoarse voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to
Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a
walk to meet him. His face with its long mustache was serious as
always, only his eyes were brighter than usual.
1599
"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a fight.
You'll see- we shall retire."
1600
"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it at
last."
1601
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostov
felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge.
Denisov galloped up to him.
1602
"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."
1603
"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
back."
1604
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the
front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the
farther side of the river.
1605
The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich Schubert, came
up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostov,
without taking any notice of him although they were now meeting for the
first time since their encounter concerning Telyanin. Rostov, feeling
that he was at the front and in the power of a man toward whom he now
admitted that he had been to blame, did not lift his eyes from the
colonel's athletic back, his nape covered with light hair, and his red
neck. It seemed to Rostov that Bogdanich was only pretending not to
notice him, and that his whole aim now was to test the cadet's courage,
so he drew himself up and looked around him merrily; then it seemed to
him that Bogdanich rode so near in order to show him his courage. Next
he thought that his enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack
just to punish him- Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack,
Bogdanich would come up to him as he lay wounded and would
magnanimously extend the hand of reconciliation.
1606
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as he
had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After his
dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the regiment,
saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front when he could
get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and had succeeded in
attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince Bagration. He now
came to his former chief with an order from the commander of the rear
guard.
1607
"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of gloomy
gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an order to stop
and fire the bridge."
1608
"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.
1609
"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious tone,
"but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the hussars
must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"
1610
Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout Nesvitski
came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely carry his
weight.
1611
"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to fire
the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are all beside
themselves over there and one can't make anything out."
1612
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to Nesvitski.
1613
"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
nothing about firing it."
1614
"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap
and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material had
been put in position?"
1615
"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell me
to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would it
burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"
1616
"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.
1617
"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"
1618
"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in an
offended tone.
1619
"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be quick or
the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."
1620
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the stout
staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.
1621
"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would still
do the right thing.
1622
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to blame
for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
the bridge.
1623
"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He wishes to
test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his face. "Let
him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.
1624
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and looked
as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came the
word of command.
1625
"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.
1626
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The men
were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the colonel, he
had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much
afraid that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his
horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart
with a thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and shouting
something. Rostov saw nothing but the hussars running all around him,
their spurs catching and their sabers clattering.
1627
"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.
1628
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud, stumbled,
and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
1629
"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.
1630
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy and
was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the front the
better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing Rostov,
shouted to him:
1631
"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right! Come
back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who, showing
off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
1632
"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.
1633
"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning in
his saddle.
1634
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and then
at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side- the
blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as artillery.
1635
"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot
range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each man of the
troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself
with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright
evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with
their bayonets and guns.
1636
"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."
1637
"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the suite.
1638
"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have done
the job just as well."
1639
"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the hussars,
but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know whether
he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency! How you
look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the Vladimir
medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered, the squadron
may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon. Our Bogdanich
knows how things are done."
1640
"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."
1641
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being detached
and hurriedly removed.
1642
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at the
moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.
1643
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the officer
of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen, fallen!"
1644
"Two, I think."
1645
"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning away.
1646
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening there,
as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had succeeded in
setting it on fire and the French batteries were now firing at them, no
longer to hinder them but because the guns were trained and there was
someone to fire at.
1647
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the
hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot
went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of
hussars and knocked three of them over.
1648
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on the
bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he had
always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like the
other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard a
rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to
him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men
seized the hussar and began lifting him.
1649
"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but
still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
1650
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something, gazed
into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky, and at the
sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep!
How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the
waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway
blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges,
and the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was
peace and happiness... "I should wishing for nothing else, nothing, if
only I were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone and in that
sunshine there is so much happiness; but here... groans, suffering,
fear, and this uncertainty and hurry... There- they are shouting again,
and again are all running back somewhere, and I shall run with them,
and it, death, is here above me and around... Another instant and I
shall never again see the sun, this water, that gorge!..."
1651
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and of
the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into one
feeling of sickening agitation.
1652
"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!" Rostov whispered.
1653
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their voices
sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from sight.
1654
"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just
above his ear.
1655
"It's all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!" thought Rostov, and
sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one foot,
from the orderly and began to mount.
1656
"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.
1657
"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks
and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the
dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting at
you like a target."
1658
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov, composed
of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from the suite.
1659
"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this was
true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
1660
"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I don't get
promoted to a sublieutenancy."
1661
"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
triumphantly and gaily.
1662
"And if he asks about the losses?"
1663
"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars wounded,
and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy smile, and
pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing distinctness.
1664
CHAPTER IX
1665
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the command
of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to it,
losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of supplies,
and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything that had
been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men commanded
by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube, stopping where
overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions only as far as
necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its heavy equipment.
There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and Melk; but despite the
courage and endurance- acknowledged even by the enemy- with which the
Russians fought, the only consequence of these actions was a yet more
rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had escaped capture at Ulm and had
joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated from the Russian army, and
Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and exhausted forces. The
defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought of. Instead of an
offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared in accord with the
modern science of strategics, had been handed to Kutuzov when he was in
Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the sole and almost unattainable
aim remaining for him was to effect a junction with the forces that
were advancing from Russia, without losing his army as Mack had done at
Ulm.
1666
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with
the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left bank,
and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were taken:
banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time, after a
fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a fight
had not only held the field but had repulsed the French. Though the
troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of their number
in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number of sick and
wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube with a
letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the enemy;
and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems converted into
military hospitals could no longer accommodate all the sick and
wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over Mortier
raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the whole army
and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors were rife of
the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some victory gained
by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the frightened Bonaparte.
1667
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the Austrian
General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse had been
wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a bullet. As a
mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was sent with the
news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no longer at Vienna
(which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn. Despite his
apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure physical fatigue
far better than many very muscular men, and on the night of the battle,
having arrived at Krems excited but not weary, with dispatches from
Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately with a special dispatch
to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a reward but an important step
toward promotion.
1668
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow that
had fallen the previous day- the day of the battle. Reviewing his
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself the
impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the
send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow officers,
Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise enjoying the
feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a long-desired
happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears seemed filled with
the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of victory. Then he began to
imagine that the Russians were running away and that he himself was
killed, but he quickly roused himself with a feeling of joy, as if
learning afresh that this was not so but that on the contrary the
French had run away. He again recalled all the details of the victory
and his own calm courage during the battle, and feeling reassured he
dozed off.... The dark starry night was followed by a bright cheerful
morning. The snow was thawing in the sunshine, the horses galloped
quickly, and on both sides of the road were forests of different kinds,
fields, and villages.
1669
At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the front
cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each of the
long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were being
jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he heard Russian
words), others were eating bread; the more severely wounded looked
silently, with the languid interest of sick children, at the envoy
hurrying past them.
1670
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
soldier three gold pieces.
1671
"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.
1672
"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers. "There's
plenty to do still."
1673
"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
conversation.
1674
"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped on.
1675
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the paved
streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings, the
lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all that
atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so attractive to
a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and sleepless
night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt even more
vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his eyes
gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with
extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the
details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the concise
form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to the
Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that might be
put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be at once
presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace, however,
an official came running out to meet him, and learning that he was a
special messenger led him to another entrance.
1676
"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will find
the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to the
Minister of War."
1677
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait, and
went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and
bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along
a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
1678
Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind instantly
suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to despise the
adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder, they
probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes
narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three minutes
taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each side of the
minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went on reading to
the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of the door and the
sound of footsteps.
1679
"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
1680
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army interested
the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he was concerned
with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger that
impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me," he
thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together, arranged them
evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual and
distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the firm,
intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently
deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial
smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man
who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.
1681
"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good
news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high
time!"
1682
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
with a mournful expression.
1683
"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a
calamity! What a calamity!"
1684
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and looked
at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
1685
"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought good
news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the victory.
His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I thank you!
You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the parade.
However, I will let you know."
1686
The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
reappeared.
1687
"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
see you," he added, bowing his head.
1688
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and
happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant. The
whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle seemed
the memory of a remote event long past.
1689
CHAPTER X
1690
Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance of
his in the diplomatic service.
1691
"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor," said
Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the prince's
things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was ushering
Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh? Splendid! And I am
sitting here ill, as you see."
1692
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.
1693
After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived of
all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life, Prince
Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious surroundings
such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides it was
pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not in
Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the
Austrians which was then particularly strong.
1694
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle as
Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in Petersburg, but
had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in Vienna with Kutuzov.
Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave promise of rising high
in the military profession, so to an even greater extent Bilibin gave
promise of rising in his diplomatic career. He still a young man but no
longer a young diplomat, as he had entered the service at the age of
sixteen, had been in Paris and Copenhagen, and now held a rather
important post in Vienna. Both the foreign minister and our ambassador
in Vienna knew him and valued him. He was not one of those many
diplomats who are esteemed because they have certain negative
qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak French. He was one of
those, who, liking work, knew how to do it, and despite his indolence
would sometimes spend a whole night at his writing table. He worked
well whatever the import of his work. It was not the question "What
for?" but the question "How?" that interested him. What the diplomatic
matter might be he did not care, but it gave him great pleasure to
prepare a circular, memorandum, or report, skillfully, pointedly, and
elegantly. Bilibin's services were valued not only for what he wrote,
but also for his skill in dealing and conversing with those in the
highest spheres.
1695
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be made
elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to say
something striking and took part in a conversation only when that was
possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with wittily original,
finished phrases of general interest. These sayings were prepared in
the inner laboratory of his mind in a portable form as if
intentionally, so that insignificant society people might carry them
from drawing room to drawing room. And, in fact, Bilibin's witticisms
were hawked about in the Viennese drawing rooms and often had an
influence on matters considered important.
1696
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which
always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers
after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the
principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would pucker
into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows would
descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small, deep-set
eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
1697
"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.
1698
Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself, described the
engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
1699
"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles," said he in conclusion.
1700
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
1701
"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a distance
and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute estime que
je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que votre victoire
n'est pas des plus victorieuses."25
25
"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian
army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."
1702
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those words in
Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
1703
"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate Mortier and
his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your fingers!
Where's the victory?"
1704
"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."
1705
"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"
1706
"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the smoothness
of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at their rear by
seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in the afternoon."
1707
"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.
"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."
1708
"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince Andrew
in the same tone.
1709
"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to take
marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but still why
didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only the Minister
of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and King Francis is
not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor secretary of the
Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of my joy to give my
Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to the Prater... True,
we have no Prater here..."
1710
He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.
1711
"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack loses
a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl give no
signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at last
gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility of the
French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear the
details."
1712
"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar, for
Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but what
do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories? Bring us
nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only over
a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and we'll
fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on purpose to
vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke Ferdinand
disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its defense- as much as
to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you and your capital!' The
one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you expose to a bullet, and
then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit that more irritating
news than yours could not have been conceived. It's as if it had been
done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose you did gain a brilliant
victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a victory, what effect would
that have on the general course of events? It's too late now when
Vienna is occupied by the French army!"
1713
"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"
1714
"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count, our
dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."
1715
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception, and
especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not take in
the full significance of the words he heard.
1716
"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was
fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
received as a savior."
1717
"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before
Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the fall
of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the bridge
and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard reports
that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.
1718
"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he is defending
us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has not yet been
taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and orders have been
given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the
mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would have spent a bad
quarter of an hour between two fires."
1719
"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said Prince
Andrew.
1720
"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they daren't
say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign, it won't
be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that will
decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin quoting one
of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead, and pausing.
"The only question is what will come of the meeting between the Emperor
Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If Prussia joins the
Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will be war. If not it
is merely a question of settling where the preliminaries of the new
Campo Formio are to be drawn up."
1721
"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what luck
the man has!"
1722
"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de
l'u!26 I shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him
simply Bonaparte!"
26
"We must let him off the u!"
1723
"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
campaign is over?"
1724
"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is not
used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the first
place because her provinces have been pillaged- they say the Holy
Russian army loots terribly- her army is destroyed, her capital taken,
and all this for the beaux yeux27 of His Sardinian Majesty.
And therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively feel that we
are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France
and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."
27
Fine eyes.
1725
"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."
1726
"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again becoming
smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
1727
When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in a
clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows, he
felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far away
from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery, Bonaparte's
new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience with the
Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
1728
He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of musketry
and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his ears, and now
again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were descending the hill,
the French were firing, and he felt his heart palpitating as he rode
forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily whistling all around,
and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as he had not done since
childhood.
1729
He woke up...
1730
"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself like
a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.
1731
CHAPTER XI
1732
Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be presented
to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,
1733
the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's conversation.
Having dressed for his attendance at court in full parade uniform,
which he had not worn for a long time, he went into Bilibin's study
fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged. In the study
were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With Prince Hippolyte
Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy, Bolkonski was already
acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the others.
1734
The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay society
men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which Bilibin, their
leader, called les notres.28 This set, consisting almost
exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had
nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to
certain women, and to the official side of the service. These gentlemen
received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they did not
extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation, they asked
him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then the talk
went off into merry jests and gossip.
28
Ours.
1735
"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a
fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."
1736
"But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin away to you- is
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
advantage of it!"
1737
Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over its
arm. He began to laugh.
1738
"Tell me about that!" he said.
1739
"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.
1740
"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
among the women!"
1741
"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"29 announced Prince
Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
29
"Woman is man's companion."
1742
Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's face,
and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom- he had to admit- he had
almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the butt of this set.
1743
"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski. "Kuragin
is exquisite when he discusses politics- you should see his gravity!"
1744
He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began talking
to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered round
these two.
1745
"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our alliance...
1746
"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him by
the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."
And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite
finished.
1747
"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
satisfaction.
1748
Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was evidently
distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain the wild
laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
1749
"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in this
house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I can,
with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it would be
easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more difficult,
and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be shown him.
You can undertake the theater, I society, and you, Hippolyte, of course
the women."
1750
"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
kissing his finger tips.
1751
"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
interests," said Bilibin.
1752
"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
looking at his watch.
1753
"Where to?"
1754
"To the Emperor."
1755
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come back
early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."
1756
"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the way
that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said Bilibin,
accompanying him to the hall.
1757
"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.
1758
"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for giving
audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do it, as you
will see."
1759
CHAPTER XII
1760
At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he had
been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into his
face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But after
it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day ceremoniously
informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give him an audience.
The Emperor Francis received him standing in the middle of the room.
Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was struck by the fact that
the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as if not knowing what to say.
1761
"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.
1762
Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor
spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions- the
answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not interest
him.
1763
"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.
1764
"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at the
front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after five in
the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and expecting
that he would have a chance to give a reliable account, which he had
ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the Emperor smiled
and interrupted him.
1765
"How many miles?"
1766
"From where to where, Your Majesty?"
1767
"From Durrenstein to Krems."
1768
"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."
1769
"The French have abandoned the left bank?"
1770
"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during the
night."
1771
"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"
1772
"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."
1773
The Emperor interrupted him.
1774
"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"
1775
"At seven o'clock, I believe."
1776
"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"
1777
The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew withdrew and
was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides. Everywhere he saw
friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's adjutant
reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and offered him his
own house. The Minister of War came up and congratulated him on the
Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which the Emperor was
conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited him to see Her
Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did not know whom
to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts. Then the
Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the window, and
began to talk to him.
1778
Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was joyfully
received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was awarded the
Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army received rewards.
Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend the whole morning
calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries. Between four and five in
the afternoon, having made all his calls, he was returning to Bilibin's
house thinking out a letter to his father about the battle and his
visit to Brunn. At the door he found a vehicle half full of luggage.
Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a portmanteau with some difficulty
out of the front door.
1779
Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop to
provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent some
time in the shop.
1780
"What is it?" he asked.
1781
"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
scoundrel is again at our heels!"
1782
"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.
1783
Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed excitement.
1784
"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This affair of
the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without striking a
blow!"
1785
Prince Andrew could not understand.
1786
"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the town
knows?"
1787
"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."
1788
"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"
1789
"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew
impatiently.
1790
"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat is
now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or two."
1791
"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was mined?"
1792
"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."
1793
Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.
1794
"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
will be cut off," said he.
1795
"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered Vienna
as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday, those
gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,30 Murat, Lannes,and
Belliard, mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are
Gascons.) 'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is
mined and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at
its head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow
up the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign
the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and
take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the
bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of the
Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."
30
The marshalls.
1796
"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
grieved him and yet he was pleased.
1797
As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it
out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from
the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame!
Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching the army
he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one
that could save the army, and how he alone would be entrusted with the
executing of the plan.
1798
"Stop this jesting," he said
1799
"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder. These
gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white handkerchiefs; they
assure the officer on duty that they, the marshals, are on their way to
negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets them enter the
tete-de-pont.31 They spin him a thousand gasconades, saying
that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a meeting
with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg, and so on.
The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace the officers,
crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French battalion gets
to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary material into
the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length appears the
lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von Mautern himself.
'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of the Turkish wars
Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's hand.... The Emperor
Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince Auersperg's
acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed, so
bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his rapidly
established intimacy with the French marshals, and so dazzled by the
sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y voit que du feu,
et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur l'ennemi!"32 In
spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did not forget to pause
after this mot to give time for its due appreciation. "The French
battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes the guns, and the bridge is
taken! But what is best of all," he went on, his excitement subsiding
under the delightful interest of his own story, "is that the sergeant
in charge of the cannon which was to give the signal to fire the mines
and blow up the bridge, this sergeant, seeing that the French troops
were running onto the bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his
hand. The sergeant, who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up
to Auersperg and says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the
French!' Murat, seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to
speak, turns to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true
Gascon) and says: 'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian
discipline, if you allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It
was a stroke of genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and
orders the sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair
of the Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."
31
Bridgehead.
32
That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought to
be firing at the enemy.
1800
"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the gray
overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of firing, and
the glory that awaited him.
1801
"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
Bilibin."It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as
at Ulm... it is..."- he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it is
a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had
produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.
1802
"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had risen
and was going toward his room.
1803
"I am going away."
1804
"Where to?"
1805
"To the army."
1806
"But you meant to stay another two days?"
1807
"But now I am off at once."
1808
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went to
his room.
1809
"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?"
1810
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.
1811
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
1812
"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back to the
army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher, it is
heroism!"
1813
"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.
1814
"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the other
side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the contrary,
is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no longer fit
for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return and have not
been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and go with us
wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to Olmutz, and
Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel comfortably in my
caleche."
1815
"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.
1816
"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are you
going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two things,"
and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you will not reach
your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will share defeat and
disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."
1817
And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.
1818
"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
thought: "I am going to save the army."
1819
"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.
1820
CHAPTER XIII
1821
That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War, Bolkonski
set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would find it and
fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
1822
In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the heavy
baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf Prince
Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was moving
with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was so
obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a carriage.
Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack commander, and
hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage wagons, rode in
search of the commander in chief and of his own luggage. Very sinister
reports of the position of the army reached him as he went along, and
the appearance of the troops in their disorderly flight confirmed these
rumors.
1823
"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des
extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme sort-
(le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."33 He remembered these words in
Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign, and
they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a feeling of
wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be nothing left
but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it no worse than
others."
33
"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the earth
by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate- (the fate of
the army at Ulm)."
1824
He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of detachments,
carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and vehicles of all
kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy road, three and
sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and before, as far as
ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels, the creaking of carts
and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the crack of whips, shouts, the
urging of horses, and the swearing of soldiers, orderlies, and
officers. All along the sides of the road fallen horses were to be
seen, some flayed, some not, and broken-down carts beside which
solitary soldiers sat waiting for something, and again soldiers
straggling from their companies, crowds of whom set off to the
neighboring villages, or returned from them dragging sheep, fowls, hay,
and bulging sacks. At each ascent or descent of the road the crowds
were yet denser and the din of shouting more incessant. Soldiers
floundering knee-deep in mud pushed the guns and wagons themselves.
Whips cracked, hoofs slipped, traces broke, and lungs were strained
with shouting. The officers directing the march rode backward and
forward between the carts. Their voices were but feebly heard amid the
uproar and one saw by their faces that they despaired of the
possibility of checking this disorder.
1825
"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski, recalling
Bilibin's words.
1826
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up to a
convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse vehicle,
evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available materials and
looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet, and a caleche. A
soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in shawls sat behind the
apron under the leather hood of the vehicle. Prince Andrew rode up and
was just putting his question to a soldier when his attention was
diverted by the desperate shrieks of the woman in the vehicle. An
officer in charge of transport was beating the soldier who was driving
the woman's vehicle for trying to get ahead of others, and the strokes
of his whip fell on the apron of the equipage. The woman screamed
piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew she leaned out from behind the apron
and, waving her thin arms from under the woolen shawl, cried:
1827
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people..."
1828
"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to the
soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"
1829
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed the
doctor's wife.
1830
"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
Andrew riding up to the officer.
1831
The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"
1832
"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.
1833
"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy rage,
"who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander here, not
you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated he. This
expression evidently pleased him.
1834
"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice from
behind.
1835
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him to
what he dreaded more than anything in the world- to ridicule; but his
instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence Prince
Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised his
riding whip.
1836
"Kind...ly let- them- pass!"
1837
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
1838
"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's this
disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."
1839
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a
sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in
chief was.
1840
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to sort
out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his mind. "This
is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking as he went up
to the window of the first house, when a familiar voice called him by
name.
1841
He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the little
window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed something, and
flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
1842
"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he
shouted.
1843
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm. This
was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing
countenance.
1844
"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.
1845
"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.
1846
"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked Nesvitski.
1847
"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I could
do to get here."
1848
"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and have
something to eat."
1849
"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
adjutant.
1850
"Where are headquarters?"
1851
"We are to spend the night in Znaim."
1852
"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said
Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit to cross the
Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's the
matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,
noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
1853
"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.
1854
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife and
the convoy officer.
1855
"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.
1856
"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.
1857
"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable, abominable,
quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off to the house
where the commander in chief was.
1858
Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the Austrian
general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little Kozlovski was
squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk, with cuffs
turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom upwards.
Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had evidently not slept all night.
He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to him.
1859
"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to the
clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."
1860
"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing angrily
and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
1861
Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him, the
disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the clerk
and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to the
commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks holding
the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that something important
and disastrous was about to happen.
1862
He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.
1863
"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."
1864
"What about capitulation?"
1865
"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."
1866
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard. Just
as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened, and
Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the doorway.
Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the expression of the
commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to be so preoccupied with
thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of his presence. He looked
straight at his adjutant's face without recognizing him.
1867
"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.
1868
"One moment, your excellency."
1869
Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in chief.
1870
"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew rather
loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
1871
Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"
1872
Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.
1873
"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"
1874
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his left
hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which he wore
a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a gesture evidently
habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration kissed him on the
neck instead.
1875
"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.
1876
"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to remain
with Prince Bagration's detachment."
1877
"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed, he
added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"
1878
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
1879
"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old man's
penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's mind. "If
a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God," he added as
if speaking to himself.
1880
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him
and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar near
his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the empty
eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those men's
death," thought Bolkonski.
1881
"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.
1882
Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had been
saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently swaying
on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince Andrew. There
was not a trace of agitation on his face. With delicate irony he
questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his interview with the
Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court concerning the Krems
affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
1883
CHAPTER XIV
1884
On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the army
he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported that
the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing in
immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the troops that
were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at Krems,
Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut him off
completely and surround his exhausted army of forty thousand, and he
would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If Kutuzov decided
to abandon the road connecting him with the troops arriving from
Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown parts of the
Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior forces of the
enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with Buxhowden. If Kutuzov
decided to retreat along the road from Krems to Olmutz, to unite with
the troops arriving from Russia, he risked being forestalled on that
road by the French who had crossed the Vienna bridge, and encumbered by
his baggage and transport, having to accept battle on the march against
an enemy three times as strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
1885
Kutuzov chose this latter course.
1886
The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles off
on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the French
forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army to a
disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to forestall
the French with his whole army was impossible. The road for the French
from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the road for the
Russians from Krems to Znaim.
1887
The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard, four
thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the Krems-Znaim to
the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march without
resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and if he
succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as long as
possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road to
Znaim.
1888
Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills, with his
hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as stragglers
by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road at Hollabrunn a
few hours ahead of the French who were approaching Hollabrunn from
Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to march for some days
before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration with his four thousand
hungry, exhausted men would have to detain for days the whole enemy
army that came upon him at Hollabrunn, which was clearly impossible.
But a freak of fate made the impossible possible. The success of the
trick that had placed the Vienna bridge in the hands of the French
without a fight led Murat to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way.
Meeting Bagration's weak detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to
be Kutuzov's whole army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited
the arrival of the rest of the troops who were on their way from
Vienna, and with this object offered a three days' truce on condition
that both armies should remain in position without moving. Murat
declared that negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that
he therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.
Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.
Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or refuse
a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he had
received.
1889
A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving Bagration's
exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport and heavy convoys
(whose movements were concealed from the French) advance if but one
stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the only, and a quite
unexpected, chance of saving the army. On receiving the news he
immediately dispatched Adjutant General Wintzingerode, who was in
attendance on him, to the enemy camp. Wintzingerode was not merely to
agree to the truce but also to offer terms of capitulation, and
meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back to hasten to the utmost the
movements of the baggage trains of the entire army along the
Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and hungry detachment, which
alone covered this movement of the transport and of the whole army, had
to remain stationary in face of an enemy eight times as strong as
itself.
1890
Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which were
in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to pass,
and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered, proved
correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen miles
from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal of a truce
and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the following letter
to Murat:
1891
Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
1892
at eight o'clock in the morning
1893
To PRINCE MURAT,
1894
I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command only
my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice without my
order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign. Break the
armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him that the
general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so, and that no
one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
1895
If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I will
ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the Russian
army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and artillery.
1896
The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are nothing
when they have no powers; this one had none.... The Austrians let
themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna bridge, you are
letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of the Emperor.
1897
NAPOLEON
1898
Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first time
for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was in store
for him.
1899
CHAPTER XV
1900
Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who had
persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and reported
himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet reached Murat's
detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In Bagration's detachment
no one knew anything of the general position of affairs. They talked of
peace but did not believe in its possibility; others talked of a battle
but also disbelieved in the nearness of an engagement. Bagration,
knowing Bolkonski to be a favorite and trusted adjutant, received him
with distinction and special marks of favor, explaining to him that
there would probably be an engagement that day or the next, and giving
him full liberty to remain with him during the battle or to join the
rearguard and have an eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very
important."
1901
"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said Bagration as
if to reassure Prince Andrew.
1902
"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a medal
he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he wishes
to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a brave
officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying, asked the
prince's permission to ride round the position to see the disposition
of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be sent to execute
an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly dressed man with a
diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of speaking French though
he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince Andrew.
1903
On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors, benches,
and fencing from the village.
1904
"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff
officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in
hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and
sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.
I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a moment."
1905
"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese," said
Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.
1906
"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
something."
1907
They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed
and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.
1908
"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The prince
gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you, Captain," and
he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer who without his
boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to dry), in only his
stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not altogether comfortably.
1909
"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he continued.
"One would think that as an artillery officer you would set a good
example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be sounded
and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The staff
officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of you,
all!" he added in a tone of command.
1910
Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery
officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged
foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,
kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.
1911
"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain Tushin
smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently wishing to adopt
a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt that his jest was
unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
1912
"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to
preserve his gravity.
1913
Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather comic,
but extremely attractive.
1914
The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode on.
1915
Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left some
entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which showed up
red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt sleeves despite the
cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host of white ants;
spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown up from behind the
bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer rode up, looked at
the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it they came upon some
dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by others, who ran from the
entrenchment. They had to hold their noses and put their horses to a
trot to escape from the poisoned atmosphere of these latrines.
1916
"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"34 said the
staff officer.
34
"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."
1917
They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could already be
seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the position.
1918
"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the highest
point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without his boots.
You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."
1919
"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew, wishing
to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please don't trouble
yourself further."
1920
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
1921
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly and
cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had been
in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road seven
miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and alarm
could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French lines
the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The soldiers in
their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major and company
officers were counting the men, poking the last man in each section in
the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers scattered over
the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and were building
shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the fires sat others,
dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg bands or mending
boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and porridge cookers.
In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers were gazing eagerly
at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample, which a quartermaster
sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an officer who sat on a log
before his shelter, had been tasted.
1922
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,
tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to
him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with
reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths, and
walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.
All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home
awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before
an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.
After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev
grenadiers- fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs- near the
shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different from the
others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of grenadiers
before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while two others
were flourishing their switches and striking him regularly on his bare
back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout major was pacing up and
down the line, and regardless of the screams kept repeating:
1923
"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor in
him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"
1924
So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but unnatural
screams, continued.
1925
"Go on, go on!" said the major.
1926
A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his face
stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the adjutant
as he rode by.
1927
Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our front
line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and left flanks,
but in the center where the men with a flag of truce had passed that
morning, the lines were so near together that the men could see one
another's faces and speak to one another. Besides the soldiers who
formed the picket line on either side, there were many curious
onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their strange foreign
enemies.
1928
Since early morning- despite an injunction not to approach the picket
line- the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away. The
soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a curiosity,
no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the sight-seers
and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew halted to have a
look at the French.
1929
"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer
and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark to
him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to keep up
with him. There now, Sidorov!"
1930
"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was
considered an adept at French.
1931
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince Andrew
recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying. Dolokhov
had come from the left flank where their regiment was stationed, with
his captain.
1932
"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible to
him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"
1933
Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about
the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the Russians,
was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and had fled all
the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the Russians had not
surrendered but had beaten the French.
1934
"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you off,"
said Dolokhov.
1935
"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said the
French grenadier.
1936
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
1937
"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"35 said
Dolokhov.
35
"On vous fera danser."
1938
"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"36 asked a Frenchman.
36
"What's he singing about?"
1939
"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others..."
1940
"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
1941
"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.
1942
"The devil skin your Emperor."
1943
And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and shouldering
his musket walked away.
1944
"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.
1945
"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
Sidorov, you have a try!"
1946
Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber meaningless
sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter, Kaska," he said,
trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
1947
"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy and
good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the French
involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed to be
to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and all return
home as quickly as possible.
1948
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.
1949
CHAPTER XVI
1950
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left, Prince
Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff officer had
told him the whole field could be seen. Here he dismounted, and stopped
beside the farthest of the four unlimbered cannon. Before the guns an
artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he stood at attention when the
officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his measured, monotonous pacing.
Behind the guns were their limbers and still farther back picket ropes
and artillerymen's bonfires. To the left, not far from the farthest
cannon, was a small, newly constructed wattle shed from which came the
sound of officers' voices in eager conversation.
1951
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and the
greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just facing
it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon Grabern
could be seen, and in three places to left and right the French troops
amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of whom were
evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To the left from
that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a battery, but
it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye. Our right flank
was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated the French
position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the farthest point
the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery stood and from
which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the easiest and
most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating us from Schon
Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse, in which smoked
the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood. The French line was
wider than ours, and it was plain that they could easily outflank us on
both sides. Behind our position was a steep and deep dip, making it
difficult for artillery and cavalry to retire. Prince Andrew took out
his notebook and, leaning on the cannon, sketched a plan of the
position. He made some notes on two points, intending to mention them
to Bagration. His idea was, first, to concentrate all the artillery in
the center, and secondly, to withdraw the cavalry to the other side of
the dip. Prince Andrew, being always near the commander in chief,
closely following the mass movements and general orders, and constantly
studying historical accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to
himself the course of events in the forthcoming action in broad
outline. He imagined only important possibilities: "If the enemy
attacks the right flank," he said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and
the Podolsk chasseurs must hold their position till reserves from the
center come up. In that case the dragoons could successfully make a
flank counterattack. If they attack our center we, having the center
battery on this high ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its
cover, and retreat to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the
time he had been beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the
officers distinctly, but as often happens had not understood a word of
what they were saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice
coming from the shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but
listen.
1952
"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, a
familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what is
beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."
1953
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
escape it anyhow."
1954
"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third
manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are
very wise, because you can take everything along with you- vodka and
snacks."
1955
And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.
1956
"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the familiar
voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is. Whatever we
may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there is no sky but
only an atmosphere."
1957
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
1958
"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.
1959
"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in the
sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.
1960
"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
future life..."
1961
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air; nearer and
nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon ball, as if it
had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded into the ground
near the shed with super human force, throwing up a mass of earth. The
ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
1962
And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer
who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
1963
CHAPTER XVII
1964
Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes ran
rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a
battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a report.
The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and galloped back
to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the cannonade behind him
growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our guns had begun to
reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the parleys had taken place,
came the report of musketry.
1965
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern letter,
and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at once
moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the Russian
wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the Emperor to
crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
1966
"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"
1967
Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and
drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same
rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets
ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that
filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but enjoyable!"
was what the face of each soldier and each officer seemed to say.
1968
Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up, he
saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming toward
him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and riding
a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped, waiting for
him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and recognizing
Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while Prince Andrew
told him what he had seen.
1969
The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face and
wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking and
feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that impassive
face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince Bagration bent
his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew told him, and
said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that everything that
took place and was reported to him was exactly what he had foreseen.
Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride, spoke quickly. Prince
Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental accent, spoke
particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that there was no need
to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the direction of
Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the suite. Behind Prince
Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the prince's personal adjutant,
Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff officer on duty, riding a fine
bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an accountant who had asked permission
to be present at the battle out of curiosity. The accountant, a stout,
full-faced man, looked around him with a naive smile of satisfaction
and presented a strange appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and
adjutants, in his camlet coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy
officer's saddle.
1970
"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to the
accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach already."
1971
"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather cunning
smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of Zherkov's joke, and
purposely trying to appear stupider than he really was.
1972
"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer. (He
remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing a
prince, but could not get it quite right.)
1973
By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a ball
struck the ground in front of them.
1974
"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive smile.
1975
"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.
1976
"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"
1977
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished speaking
when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which suddenly
ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a Cossack,
riding a little to their right and behind the accountant, crashed to
earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent over their
saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant stopped, facing
the Cossack, and examined him with attentive curiosity. The Cossack was
dead, but the horse still struggled.
1978
Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing the
cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to say,
"Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with the
case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged his
saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber of a
kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story of
Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the recollection
was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had reached the battery
at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined the battlefield.
1979
"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman standing by
the ammunition wagon.
1980
He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you frightened
here?" and the artilleryman understood him.
1981
"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired, freckled
gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
1982
"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he rode
past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
1983
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and his
suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they could see
the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly back to its
former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number One, holding a
mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while Number Two with a
trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's mouth. The short,
round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over the tail of the gun
carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the general, looked out
shading his eyes with his small hand.
1984
"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a
feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to
his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"
1985
Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his cap
with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military salute
but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though
Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing
incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just opposite,
in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
1986
No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but after
consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had great
respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set fire to
the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the officer's
report, and began deliberately to examine the whole battlefield
extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on our right.
Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was stationed, in the
hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring rolling and
crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the right beyond
the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to Bagration a
French column that was outflanking us. To the left the horizon bounded
by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two battalions from the
center to be sent to reinforce the right flank. The officer of the
suite ventured to remark to the prince that if these battalions went
away, the guns would remain without support. Prince Bagration turned to
the officer and with his dull eyes looked at him in silence. It seemed
to Prince Andrew that the officer's remark was just and that really no
answer could be made to it. But at that moment an adjutant galloped up
with a message from the commander of the regiment in the hollow and
news that immense masses of the French were coming down upon them and
that his regiment was in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev
grenadiers. Prince Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and
approval. He rode off at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to
the dragoons with orders to attack the French. But this adjutant
returned half an hour later with the news that the commander of the
dragoons had already retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy
fire had been opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had
hastened to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.
1987
"Very good!" said Bagration.
1988
As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also, and
as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go there
himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in command
(the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at Braunau) that
he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow in the rear,
as the right flank would probably not be able to withstand the enemy's
attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion that had been in
support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince Andrew listened
attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the commanding officers and
the orders he gave them and, to his surprise, found that no orders were
really given, but that Prince Bagration tried to make it appear that
everything done by necessity, by accident, or by the will of
subordinate commanders was done, if not by his direct command, at least
in accord with his intentions. Prince Andrew noticed, however, that
though what happened was due to chance and was independent of the
commander's will, owing to the tact Bagration showed, his presence was
very valuable. Officers who approached him with disturbed countenances
became calm; soldiers and officers greeted him gaily, grew more
cheerful in his presence, and were evidently anxious to display their
courage before him.
1989
CHAPTER XVIII
1990
Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right flank,
began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where
on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to
the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness
of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One with a
bleeding head and no cap was being dragged along by two soldiers who
supported him under the arms. There was a gurgle in his throat and he
was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently hit him in the throat or
mouth. Another was walking sturdily by himself but without his musket,
groaning aloud and swinging his arm which had just been hurt, while
blood from it was streaming over his greatcoat as from a bottle. He had
that moment been wounded and his face showed fear rather than
suffering. Crossing a road they descended a steep incline and saw
several men lying on the ground; they also met a crowd of soldiers some
of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were ascending the hill breathing
heavily, and despite the general's presence were talking loudly and
gesticulating. In front of them rows of gray cloaks were already
visible through the smoke, and an officer catching sight of Bagration
rushed shouting after the crowd of retreating soldiers, ordering them
back. Bagration rode up to the ranks along which shots crackled now
here and now there, drowning the sound of voices and the shouts of
command. The whole air reeked with smoke. The excited faces of the
soldiers were blackened with it. Some were using their ramrods, others
putting powder on the touchpans or taking charges from their pouches,
while others were firing, though who they were firing at could not be
seen for the smoke which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant
humming and whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?"
thought Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be
an attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square- for they are
not drawn up for that."
1991
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had
been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know what
had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to him, and
could not say with certainty whether the attack had been repulsed or
his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at the
commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all over his
regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had shouted
"Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still firing, not at
the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French infantry who had come
into the hollow and were firing at our men. Prince Bagration bowed his
head as a sign that this was exactly what he had desired and expected.
Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to bring down the two battalions
of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had just passed. Prince Andrew was
struck by the changed expression on Prince Bagration's face at this
moment. It expressed the concentrated and happy resolution you see on
the face of a man who on a hot day takes a final run before plunging
into the water. The dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor
the affectation of profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes
looked before him eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on
anything although his movements were still slow and measured.
1992
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating
him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing for
support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him. "There,
you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling, singing, and
hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone of entreaty and
reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who has picked up an ax:
"We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister your hands." He spoke as
if those bullets could not kill him, and his half-closed eyes gave
still more persuasiveness to his words. The staff officer joined in the
colonel's appeals, but Bagration did not reply; he only gave an order
to cease firing and re-form, so as to give room for the two approaching
battalions. While he was speaking, the curtain of smoke that had
concealed the hollow, driven by a rising wind, began to move from right
to left as if drawn by an invisible hand, and the hill opposite, with
the French moving about on it, opened out before them. All eyes
fastened involuntarily on this French column advancing against them and
winding down over the uneven ground. One could already see the
soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the officers from the men, and see
the standard flapping against its staff.
1993
"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.
1994
The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The clash
would take place on this side of it...
1995
The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly formed up
and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the laggards, came
two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order. Before they had
reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of men marching in
step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to Bagration, marched
a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a stupid and happy
expression- the same man who had rushed out of the wattle shed. At that
moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how dashing a fellow he
would appear as he passed the commander.
1996
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly with
his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to his full
height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with the heavy
tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He carried close
to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and not like a
real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and now back at
the men without losing step, his whole powerful body turning flexibly.
It was as if all the powers of his soul were concentrated on passing
the commander in the best possible manner, and feeling that he was
doing it well he was happy. "Left... left... left..." he seemed to
repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in time to this, with
stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers burdened with knapsacks
and muskets marched in step, and each one of these hundreds of soldiers
seemed to be repeating to himself at each alternate step, "Left...
left... left..." A fat major skirted a bush, puffing and falling out of
step; a soldier who had fallen behind, his face showing alarm at his
defection, ran at a trot, panting to catch up with his company. A
cannon ball, cleaving the air, flew over the heads of Bagration and his
suite, and fell into the column to the measure of "Left... left!"
"Close up!" came the company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The
soldiers passed in a semicircle round something where the ball had
fallen, and an old trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who
had stopped beside the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling
into step with a hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous
silence and the regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one
seemed to hear left... left... left.
1997
"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.
1998
"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from
the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We
know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though fearing
to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
1999
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
2000
Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over
his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The head
of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from below
the hill.
2001
"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous voice,
turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging his arms,
he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the awkward gait of
a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible power was leading
him forward, and experienced great happiness.
2002
The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside Bagration,
could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets, and even
their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who, with
gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with difficulty.)
Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently continued to walk
on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after another rang out from
the French, smoke appeared all along their uneven ranks, and musket
shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among them the round-faced
officer who had marched so gaily and complacently. But at the moment
the first report was heard, Bagration looked round and shouted,
"Hurrah!"
2003
"Hurrah- ah!- ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and passing
Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular but joyous
and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
2004
CHAPTER XIX
2005
The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed to
set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French advance. The
French were putting out the fire which the wind was spreading, and thus
gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the center to the other side
of the dip in the ground at the rear was hurried and noisy, but the
different companies did not get mixed. But our left- which consisted of
the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the Pavlograd hussars- was
simultaneously attacked and outflanked by superior French forces under
Lannes and was thrown into confusion. Bagration had sent Zherkov to the
general commanding that left flank with orders to retreat immediately.
2006
Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse about and
galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his courage
failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it was
dangerous.
2007
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where the
firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where they
could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
2008
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander of
the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which Dolokhov was
serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left flank had
been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment in which
Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two commanders
were much exasperated with one another and, long after the action had
begun on the right flank and the French were already advancing, were
engaged in discussion with the sole object of offending one another.
But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry, were by no means ready
for the impending action. From privates to general they were not
expecting a battle and were engaged in peaceful occupations, the
cavalry feeding the horses and the infantry collecting wood.
2009
"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the hussars,
flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so let him do
what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars... Bugler, sount ze
retreat!"
2010
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the capotes
of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the milldam and
forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The general in
command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky steps, and
having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and rode to the
Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows but with
secret malevolence in their hearts.
2011
"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my men in
the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to occupy the
position and prepare for an attack."
2012
"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"
suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."
2013
"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
you are not aware of the fact..."
2014
"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel, touching
his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so goot to come
to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't vish to
destroy my men for your pleasure!"
2015
"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own pleasure and
I won't allow it to be said!"
2016
Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front
line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that it
was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken ground,
as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The general and
colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another like two
fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to detect signs
of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination successfully. As
there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give occasion for it
to be alleged that he had been the first to leave the range of fire,
they would have remained there for a long time testing each other's
courage had it not been that just then they heard the rattle of
musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the wood. The French
had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It was no longer
possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry. They were cut
off from the line of retreat on the left by the French. However
inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to attack in order to
cut away through for themselves.
2017
The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to mount
before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns bridge,
there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and again that
terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear- resembling the line
separating the living from the dead- lay between them. All were
conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether they would they
would cross it or not, and how they would cross it, agitated them all.
2018
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to questions put
to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately insisting on having
his own way, gave an order. No one said anything definite, but the
rumor of an attack spread through the squadron. The command to form up
rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were drawn from their
scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left flank, infantry
and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not himself know what to
do, and this irresolution communicated itself to the men.
2019
"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at last the
time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which he had so
often heard from his fellow hussars.
2020
"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
fo'ward!"
2021
The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at the
reins and started of his own accord.
2022
Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his hussars and
still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see distinctly but
took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some way off.
2023
"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.
2024
Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had been
in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible- and now he had
crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.
2025
"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a full
gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was already
visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep over the
squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at that instant
the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away from him, and
Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be carried forward with
unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same spot. From behind him
Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against him and looked angrily at
him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped past.
2026
"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov asked
and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle of a
field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw nothing
before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around him. There
was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the horse is
killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back, pinning his
rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled but could
not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his sabretache
having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men were, and where
the French, he did not know. There was no one near.
2027
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now
the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself
and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he
wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing
some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a man
wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned, and with
a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running behind. One of
them said something strange, not in Russian. In among the hindmost of
these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar. He was being
held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
2028
"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will take
me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing his
eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching Frenchmen, and
though but a moment before he had been galloping to get at them and
hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful that he could
not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they running? Can they be
coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom everyone is so fond of?" He
remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his
friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible. "But
perhaps they may do it!" For more than ten seconds he stood not moving
from the spot or realizing the situation. The foremost Frenchman, the
one with the hooked nose, was already so close that the expression of
his face could be seen. And the excited, alien face of that man, his
bayonet hanging down, holding his breath, and running so lightly,
frightened Rostov. He seized his pistol and, instead of firing it,
flung it at the Frenchman and ran with all his might toward the bushes.
He did not now run with the feeling of doubt and conflict with which he
had trodden the Enns bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing
from the hounds. One single sentiment, that of fear for his young and
happy life, possessed his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he
fled across the field with the impetuosity he used to show at
catchplay, now and then turning his good-natured, pale, young face to
look back. A shudder of terror went through him: "No, better not look,"
he thought, but having reached the bushes he glanced round once more.
The French had fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man
changed his run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a
comrade farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake,"
thought he. "They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time,
his left arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to
it. He could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim.
Rostov closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another
whistled past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold
of his left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these
were some Russian sharpshooters.
2029
CHAPTER XX
2030
The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the outskirts
of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting mixed, and
retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his fear, uttered the
senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in battle, and that word
infected the whole crowd with a feeling of panic.
2031
"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.
2032
The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the general
realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment, and the
thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service who had
never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters for
negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and above
all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for self-preservation,
he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring his horse, galloped
to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell around, but
fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what was happening
and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he had made one, so
that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years' service, who had
never been censured, should not be held to blame.
2033
Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of
soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,
disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate shouts
that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his furious
purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former self,
and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued to run,
talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral
hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating
in a panic.
2034
The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at
that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any
apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was Timokhin's
company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood and, having
lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French unexpectedly.
Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the enemy with such a
desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination that, taken by
surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets and run. Dolokhov,
running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at close quarters and was
the first to seize the surrendering French officer by his collar. Our
fugitives returned, the battalions re-formed, and the French who had
nearly cut our left flank in half were for the moment repulsed. Our
reserve units were able to join up, and the fight was at an end. The
regimental commander and Major Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge,
letting the retreating companies pass by them, when a soldier came up
and took hold of the commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him.
The man was wearing a bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or
cap, his head was bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition
pouch was slung. He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was
pale, his blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and
his lips were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving
instructions to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the
soldier.
2035
"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to
the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I
stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I beg
you will remember this, your excellency!"
2036
"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
Ekonomov.
2037
But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around his
head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
2038
"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your excellency!"
2039
Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of the
action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the center,
send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew also, to order
the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When the supports
attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the middle of the
action by someone's order, the battery had continued firing and was
only not captured by the French because the enemy could not surmise
that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing from four
quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action of that
battery led the French to suppose that here- in the center- the main
Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to attack
this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by grapeshot from
the four isolated guns on the hillock.
2040
Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schon Grabern.
2041
"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine! Grand!
Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen, brightening
up.
2042
All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the
soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"
The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French
columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as though
in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the right of
the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.
2043
In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed this
battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our guns, one
knocking over two horses and another tearing off a munition-wagon
driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were, however, not diminished,
but only changed character. The horses were replaced by others from a
reserve gun carriage, the wounded were carried away, and the four guns
were turned against the ten-gun battery. Tushin's companion officer had
been killed at the beginning of the engagement and within an hour
seventeen of the forty men of the guns' crews had been disabled, but
the artillerymen were still as merry and lively as ever. Twice they
noticed the French appearing below them, and then they fired grapeshot
at them.
2044
Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly to
"refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it, ran
forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the French.
2045
"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels
and working the screws himself.
2046
Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always made him
jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from gun to gun,
now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders about replacing
dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones, and shouting in his
feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute. His face grew more and
more animated. Only when a man was killed or wounded did he frown and
turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at the men who, as is always
the case, hesitated about lifting the injured or dead. The soldiers,
for the most part handsome fellows and, as is always the case in an
artillery company, a head and shoulders taller and twice as broad as
their officer- all looked at their commander like children in an
embarrassing situation, and the expression on his face was invariably
reflected on theirs.
2047
Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense of
fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded never
occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more elated. It
seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a day, since he
had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and that the corner
of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar ground. Though he
thought of everything, considered everything, and did everything the
best of officers could do in his position, he was in a state akin to
feverish delirium or drunkenness.
2048
From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle and
thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and perspiring faces
of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight of the blood of men
and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on the enemy's side (always
followed by a ball flying past and striking the earth, a man, a gun, a
horse), from the sight of all these things a fantastic world of his own
had taken possession of his brain and at that moment afforded him
pleasure. The enemy's guns were in his fancy not guns but pipes from
which occasional puffs were blown by an invisible smoker.
2049
"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a small
cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left by the
wind.
2050
"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."
2051
"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing close
by, who heard him muttering.
2052
"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.
2053
"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"37
was the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their guns
seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard Number
One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at him more
often than at anyone else and took delight in his every movement. The
sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now diminishing, now
increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He listened intently to
the ebb and flow of these sounds.
37
Daughter of Matthew.
2054
"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.
2055
He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was
throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.
2056
"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was saying
as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice called above
his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"
2057
Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had turned
him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping voice:
2058
"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."
2059
"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
superior.
2060
"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap. "I..."
2061
But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another ball
stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
2062
"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.
2063
The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the same
order.
2064
It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the space
where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with a
broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed horses.
Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the limbers lay
several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he approached
and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the mere thought
of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid," thought he, and
dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the order and did not
leave the battery. He decided to have the guns removed from their
positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together with Tushin, stepping
across the bodies and under a terrible fire from the French, he
attended to the removal of the guns.
2065
"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"
2066
Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to seem
not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two cannon
that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down the
hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind), Prince
Andrew rode up to Tushin.
2067
"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to Tushin.
2068
"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.
2069
CHAPTER XXI
2070
The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing dark
and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous. The
cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on the
right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the
staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice
sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to proceed,
reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and, silently-
fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep without
knowing why- rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the orders were
to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves after troops
and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty infantry officer
who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's wattle shed was
laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's" carriage. At the
foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one hand with the
other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.
2071
"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For
God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"
2072
It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift
and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.
2073
"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"
2074
"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on, lad,"
he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the wounded
officer?"
2075
"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.
2076
"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antonov."
2077
The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was pale
and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer. The
cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
breeches and arm.
2078
"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
which Rostov sat.
2079
"No, it's a sprain."
2080
"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.
2081
"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
apologizing for the state of his gun.
2082
It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the
infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted.
It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten
paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on
the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot
gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by
soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out
of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move, and the
artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they
awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly,
streamed out of a side street.
2083
"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.
2084
"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now," said
another.
2085
"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! Nothing
could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to drink?"
2086
The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in
the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded by the
humming infantry as by a frame.
2087
In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing
always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound
of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of
the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the
darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled
with their groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of
the night. After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode
past on a white horse followed by his suite, and said something in
passing: "What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank
us?" came eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began
pressing closer together and a report spread that they were ordered to
halt: evidently those in front had halted. All remained where they were
in the middle of the muddy road.
2088
Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing
station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the
soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged himself to the
fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole
body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake kept
awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no
satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking
at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble,
round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting cross-legged like a
Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with
sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw that Tushin with his
whole heart wished to help him but could not.
2089
From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who
were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound of
voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud, the
crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous
rumble.
2090
It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the
gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm.
Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and
around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels,
held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.
2091
"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"
2092
With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to
the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns moved a
trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed
to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each
trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.
2093
"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
shouted hoarsely.
2094
Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.
2095
"Must one die like a dog?" said he.
2096
Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
2097
"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow
countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it with interest," said
he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
2098
Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and
passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
2099
"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.
2100
"He's dead- why carry him?" said another.
2101
"Shut up!"
2102
And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.
2103
"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
2104
"Yes."
2105
"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here," said
a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
2106
"Coming, friend."
2107
Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
walked away from the fire.
2108
Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some commanding
officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with the
half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the
general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a
glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet
ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew,
pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.
2109
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and
the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture, shaking his
head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner really interested him,
perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at a
dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a
French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our dragoons. Our
officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince Bagration was thanking
the individual commanders and inquiring into details of the action and
our losses. The general whose regiment had been inspected at Braunau
was informing the prince that as soon as the action began he had
withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were woodcutting, and,
allowing the French to pass him, had made a bayonet charge with two
battalions and had broken up the French troops.
2110
"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come on
and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'- and that's
what I did."
2111
The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not
managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.
Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid
all that confusion what did or did not happen?
2112
"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-
remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last interview
with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private Dolokhov, who was reduced to
the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence and
particularly distinguished himself."
2113
"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency," chimed in
Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the hussars all that
day, but had heard about them from an infantry officer. "They broke up
two squares, your excellency."
2114
Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the
glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:
2115
"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for
someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the very
beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning to
the staff officer on duty.
2116
"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I can't
understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had only just
left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added, modestly.
2117
Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.
2118
"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
Andrew.
2119
"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff officer,
with a smile to Bolkonski.
2120
"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly and
abruptly.
2121
All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past the
generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always was by
the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of the banner
and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
2122
"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not so
much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom Zherkov
laughed loudest.
2123
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his
guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive
present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so
excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The
officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before Bagration
with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to mutter: "I don't
know... your excellency... I had no men... your excellency."
2124
"You might have taken some from the covering troops."
2125
Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that was
perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who
has blundered looks at an examiner.
2126
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not wishing
to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture to
intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows and his
fingers twitched nervously.
2127
"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I went
there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two guns
smashed, and no supports at all."
2128
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at Bolkonski,
who spoke with suppressed agitation.
2129
"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
2130
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show distrust
in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to credit
it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince Andrew went
out with him.
2131
"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.
2132
Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He felt
sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped.
2133
"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will all
this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows before him.
The pain in his arm became more and more intense. Irresistible
drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his eyes, and the
impression of those voices and faces and a sense of loneliness merged
with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers- wounded and
unwounded- it was they who were crushing, weighing down, and twisting
the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm and shoulder. To
rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
2134
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov
with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with
Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier
with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that were
so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and always
dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them, but they
would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's breadth. It
would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not pull it, but it
was immpossible to get rid of them.
2135
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung less
than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling snow were
fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the doctor had not
come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was sitting naked at
the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow body.
2136
"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or pity
me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He sighed and,
doing so, groaned involuntarily.
2137
"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his shirt out
over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt and added:
"What a lot of men have been crippled today- frightful!"
2138
Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why
did I come here?" he wondered.
2139
Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant of
Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.
2140
BOOK THREE: 1805
2141
CHAPTER I
2142
Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his plans.
Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own advantage. He
was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom getting on had
become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he never rightly
accounted to himself, but which formed the whole interest of his life,
were constantly shaping themselves in his mind, arising from the
circumstances and persons he met. Of these plans he had not merely one
or two in his head but dozens, some only beginning to form themselves,
some approaching achievement, and some in course of disintegration. He
did not, for instance, say to himself: "This man now has influence, I
must gain his confidence and friendship and through him obtain a
special grant." Nor did he say to himself: "Pierre is a rich man, I
must entice him to marry my daughter and lend me the forty thousand
rubles I need." But when he came across came across a man of position
his instinct immediately told him that this man could be useful, and
without any premeditation Prince Vasili
2143
took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become
intimate with him, and finally make his request.
2144
He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an appointment as
Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time conferred the status of
Councilor of State, and insisted on the young man accompanying him to
Petersburg and staying at his house. With apparent absent-mindedness,
yet with unhesitating assurance that he was doing the right thing,
Prince Vasili did everything to get Pierre to marry his daughter. Had
he thought out his plans beforehand he could not have been so natural
and shown such unaffected familiarity in intercourse with everybody
both above and below him in social standing. Something always drew him
toward those richer and more powerful than himself and he had rare
skill in seizing the most opportune moment for making use of people.
2145
Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt
himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset and
preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He had to
sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the purpose of
which was not clear to him, to question his chief steward, to visit his
estate near Moscow, and to receive many people who formerly did not
even wish to know of his existence but would now have been offended and
grieved had he chosen not to see them. These different people-
businessmen, relations, and acquaintances alike- were all disposed to
treat the young heir in the most friendly and flattering manner: they
were all evidently firmly convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was
always hearing such words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or,
"With your excellent heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or,
"Were he as clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to
believe in his own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence,
the more so as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him
that he really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had
formerly been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became
gentle and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist
and hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room
after the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him
she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not now
feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for
permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks
longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much.
She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this
statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged
her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest
princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped scarf
for him.
2146
"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with a
great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing him a
deed to sign for the princess' benefit.
2147
Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to throw
this bone- a bill for thirty thousand rubles- to the poor princess that
it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the affair of the
inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after that the princess
grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became affectionate to him,
especially the youngest, the pretty one with the mole, who often made
him feel confused by her smiles and her own confusion when meeting him.
2148
It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it
would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he could
not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides, he had
no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or not. He was
always busy and always felt in a state of mild and cheerful
intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some important
and general movement; that something was constantly expected of him,
that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many people,
but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did what was
demanded of him, but still that happy result always remained in the
future.
2149
More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's
affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of
Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air of
a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would not,
for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was the son
of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth, to the
caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few days he spent
in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would call Pierre, or
go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be done in a tone of
weariness and assurance, as if he were adding every time: "You know I
am overwhelmed with business and it is purely out of charity that I
trouble myself about you, and you also know quite well that what I
propose is the only thing possible."
2150
"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince Vasili
one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow, speaking as if
he were saying something which had long since been agreed upon and
could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm giving you a place
in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important business here is now
settled, and I ought to have been off long ago. Here is something I
have received from the chancellor. I asked him for you, and you have
been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a Gentleman of the
Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open before you."
2151
Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words
were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his career,
wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili interrupted him in
the special deep cooing tone, precluding the possibility of
interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases when special
persuasion was needed.
2152
"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my conscience,
and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever complained yet of
being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you could throw it up
tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself when you get to
Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from these terrible
recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my boy. And my valet
can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly forgetting," he added. "You
know, mon cher, your father and I had some accounts to settle, so I
have received what was due from the Ryazan estate and will keep it; you
won't require it. We'll go into the accounts later."
2153
By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several
thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the
prince had retained for himself.
2154
In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of
gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather the
rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for
2155
him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so
numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of
bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always in
front of him but never attained.
2156
Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in Petersburg.
The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been reduced to the
ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the provinces; Prince
Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity to spend his
nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his mind by
intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he respected.
His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and was spent
chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout princess,
his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.
2157
Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
2158
Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that what
he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that remarks
which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind became foolish
as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary Hippolyte's stupidest
remarks came out clever and apt. Now everything Pierre said was
charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say so, he could see that she
wished to and only refrained out of regard for his modesty.
2159
In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna
Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added: "You
will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful to
see."
2160
When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some
link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and
Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation were
being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased him as an
entertaining supposition.
2161
Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the novelty she
offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a diplomatist fresh
from Berlin with the very latest details of the Emperor Alexander's
visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august friends had pledged
themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold the cause of justice
against the enemy of the human race. Anna Pavlovna received Pierre with
a shade of melancholy, evidently relating to the young man's recent
loss by the death of Count Bezukhov (everyone constantly considered it
a duty to assure Pierre that he was greatly afflicted by the death of
the father he had hardly known), and her melancholy was just like the
august melancholy she showed at the mention of her most august Majesty
the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre felt flattered by this. Anna
Pavlovna arranged the different groups in her drawing room with her
habitual skill. The large group, in which were Prince Vasili and the
generals, had the benefit of the diplomat. Another group was at the tea
table. Pierre wished to join the former, but Anna Pavlovna- who was in
the excited condition of a commander on a battlefield to whom thousands
of new and brilliant ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in
action- seeing Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:
2162
"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She
glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable to
my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten minutes.
And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count who will not
refuse to accompany you."
2163
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre, looking
as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
2164
"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately
beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so young a
girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It comes from her
heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least worldly of men
would occupy a most brilliant position in society. Don't you think so?
I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna Pavlovna let Pierre go.
2165
Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's perfection
of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her beauty and
her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in society.
2166
The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed
desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to show
her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if inquiring
what she was to do with these people. On leaving them, Anna Pavlovna
again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't say that it is
dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.
2167
Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the
possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt
coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to see
Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome and
the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation, Helene
turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she gave to
everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so little
meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt was just
speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to Pierre's
father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess Helene
asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.
2168
"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a
celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the
snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.
2169
He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the
snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to
make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at evening
parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut very low at
front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like marble to
Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could not but
perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near to his
lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have touched
them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of perfume,
and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble
beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the charm of
her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen this he
could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an illusion we
have once seen through.
2170
"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed to
say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman who may
belong to anyone- to you too," said her glance. And at that moment
Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his wife, and that
it could not be otherwise.
2171
He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing at the
altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know, he did not
even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he knew not why,
that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would happen.
2172
Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more to see
her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen her every
day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could not, any more
than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the
mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has
once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to
him. She already had power over him, and between them there was no
longer any barrier except the barrier of his own will.
2173
"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
voice, "I see you are all right there."
2174
And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything
reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that
everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
2175
A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said
to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"
2176
This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and
Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house
done up.
2177
"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is good
to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince Vasili.
"I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so young. You
need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old woman's
privilege."
2178
She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they have
mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing," she
continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at
Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He
muttered something and colored.
2179
When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking of
what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely understood
that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her beauty was
mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good looking," he
had understood that this woman might belong to him.
2180
"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought.
"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites
in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with her
and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's why he
was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her
father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this
(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and
was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while
thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be
his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all he
had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her not
as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body only
veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never occur to
me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible, that
there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him
dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks
and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He
recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about
his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and
others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way,
bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he
ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this conviction
to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in all its
womanly beauty.
2181
CHAPTER II
2182
In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection in
four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to
visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son
Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the
daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking
these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre,
who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in
Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd,
excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be), but
had not yet proposed to her.
2183
"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince Vasili
to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that Pierre who
was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that") was not
behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity... well, God be
with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of heart, "but it
must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow will be Lelya's name
day. I will invite two or three people, and if he does not understand
what he ought to do then it will be my affair- yes, my affair. I am her
father."
2184
Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless night
when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and that
he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision, had
not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's eyes he
was every day more and more connected with her, that it was impossible
for him to return to his former conception of her, that he could not
break away from her, and that though it would be a terrible thing he
would have to unite his fate with hers. He might perhaps have been able
to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had rarely before given
receptions) now hardly let a day go by without having an evening party
at which Pierre had to be present unless he wished to spoil the general
pleasure and disappoint everyone's expectation. Prince Vasili, in the
rare moments when he was at home, would take Pierre's hand in passing
and draw it downwards, or absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek for Pierre to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow,"
or, "Be in to dinner or I shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for
your sake," and so on. And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as
he said) for Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with
him, Pierre felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself
one and the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my
mind what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now?
No, she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to
himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She
says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so she
is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so she
cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections or think
aloud in her company, and she had always answered him either by a brief
but appropriate remark- showing that it did not interest her- or by a
silent look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed
Pierre her superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as
nonsense in comparison with that smile.
2185
She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him
alone, in which there was something more significant than in the
general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that
everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line,
and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an
incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful
step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt
himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to
himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have
none?"
2186
He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter
he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and
really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they
feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was
overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at
Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire
paralyzed his will.
2187
On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people- as his
wife said- met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and
relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl
would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.
Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,
was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the
more important guests- an old general and his wife, and Anna Pavlovna
Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less important guests,
and there too sat the members of the family, and Pierre and Helene,
side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any supper: he went round
the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by one, now by another, of
the guests. To each of them he made some careless and agreeable remark
except to Pierre and Helene, whose presence he seemed not to notice. He
enlivened the whole party. The wax candles burned brightly, the silver
and crystal gleamed, so did the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver
of the men's epaulets; servants in scarlet liveries moved round the
table, the clatter of plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the
animated hum of several conversations. At one end of the table, the old
chamberlain was heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her
passionately, at which she laughed; at the other could be heard the
story of the misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the
center of the table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention.
With a facetious smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about
last Wednesday's meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey
Kuzmich Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg,
had received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander
from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was
receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that the
declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that he
was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor to be
worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey Kuzmich, From
all sides reports reach me," etc.
2188
"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked one
of the ladies.
2189
"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,
laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides...
Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He began
the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey' he
sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in sobs
and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and again:
'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last somebody
else was asked to read it."
2190
"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing.
2191
"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table
holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent
man, our dear Vyazmitinov...."
2192
Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where the
honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and under the
influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and Helene
sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
to do with Sergey Kuzmich- a smile of bashfulness at their own
feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much as
they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however they
avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as
they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave
that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the food were
all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was
directed to- Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing of
Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly said:
"Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna Pavlovna
threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in her eyes,
which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read a
congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's
happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to
the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her
sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me but to
sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these young
ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense all
this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy
faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!"
2193
Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human
feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their affected
chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation
was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting
at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they
looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face and at the red,
broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very
light of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
2194
Pierre felt that he the center of it all, and this both pleased and
embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some
occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only
now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality
shot unexpectedly through his mind.
2195
"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened? How
quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself alone,
but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are all
expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it will
certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling shoulders
close to his eyes.
2196
Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky
man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he
consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about? How
did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then there was
nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards
with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it
begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was sitting by her side
as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her breathing,
her movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him that it
was not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was why
they all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration he
would expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good
fortune. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him
a second time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand
what was said.
2197
"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated Prince
Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear fellow."
2198
Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought Pierre.
"What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle
childlike smile, and Helene smiled too.
2199
"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince
Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
dispute.
2200
"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.
2201
"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.
2202
After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave
of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The old
general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. "Oh, the
old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be beautiful still
when she's fifty."
2203
"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old
princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have
stayed longer."
2204
The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter's happiness.
2205
While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long
time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were
sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone
with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was
inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take the final step.
He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else's place
here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some inner voice
whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have not in them
what there is in you."
2206
But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
2207
Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili gave
him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was so
strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards, made him sit
down, and smiled affectionately.
2208
"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.
2209
And he again turned to Pierre.
2210
"Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top button
of his waistcoat.
2211
Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then, and
Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered something
and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was
disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the
world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed
disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own fault."
2212
"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and he
again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey Kuzmich,
asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it properly.
Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
2213
When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.
2214
"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."
2215
"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.
2216
Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down
on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to
be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.
2217
"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."
2218
The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
Helene still sat talking just as before.
2219
"Still the same," she said to her husband.
2220
Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went
past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
rose in alarm on seeing it.
2221
"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!- (He
put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)- "My dear
boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I loved your
father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless you!..."
2222
He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with
his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.
2223
"Princess, come here!" he shouted.
2224
The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using her
handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.
2225
"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so it
is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because it's
definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held the
hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom as it
rose and fell.
2226
"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.
2227
"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but could
not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face. She
drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.
2228
"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his spectacles.
2229
Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
unpleasantly excited expression.
2230
"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.
2231
"Je vous aime!"38 he said, remembering what has to be said at
such moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of
himself.
38
"I love you."
2232
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's large,
newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people said,
of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.
2233
CHAPTER III
2234
Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili in
November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him a
visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I shall
think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at the same
time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My
2235
son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you
will allow him personally to express the deep respect that, emulating
his father, he feels for you."
2236
"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the little
princess on hearing the news.
2237
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
2238
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one evening
in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
2239
Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And now,
from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little
princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion
changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he
mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince Bolkonski
was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a
bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether his being in a
bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasili's visit, he was
in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon had already advised the
architect not to go the prince with his report.
2240
"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's
attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on his
heels- we know what that means...."
2241
However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the outbuildings,
frowning and silent.
2242
"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man, resembling
his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him back to the
house.
2243
"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."
2244
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be thanked,"
thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"
2245
"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I heard,
your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."
2246
The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning.
2247
"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his
shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"
2248
"Your honor, I thought..."
2249
"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!...
I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and would
have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively
avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted the prince
rapidly.
2250
But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued
to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!" did not
lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
2251
Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew that
the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the same
as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast eyes.
What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions she
ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not. She
thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will
say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps."
2252
The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.
2253
"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.
2254
"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he
thought- referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
room.
2255
"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"
2256
"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright
smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."
2257
"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.
2258
His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the
prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to
appear.
2259
"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne: "Heaven
knows what a fright might do."
2260
In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear,
and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt for
her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with
her about the old prince and criticized him.
2261
"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His
Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she said
inquiringly.
2262
"Hm!- his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't
understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't
want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell today?
Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called him this
morning?"
2263
"No, mon pere."
2264
Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice of
a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
after the soup the prince became more genial.
2265
After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her maid. She grew
pale on seeing her father-in-law.
2266
She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
2267
"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the prince's
question as to how she felt.
2268
"Do you want anything?"
2269
"No, merci, mon pere."
2270
"Well, all right, all right."
2271
He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood with
bowed head.
2272
"Has the snow been shoveled back?"
2273
"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only my
stupidity."
2274
"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and then
proceeded to his study.
2275
Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.
2276
Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
2277
Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual
round of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for
him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and
ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very
well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really has so much
money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole.
2278
He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.
Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round
with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."
2279
"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked, as
if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
mentioned during the journey.
2280
"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince."
2281
"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't bear
those old men! Eh?"
2282
"Remember, for you everything depends on this."
2283
In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms that
the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
vainly trying to master her agitation.
2284
"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter
the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with him."
The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror. The
little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received from
Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome the
minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with
what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son
had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received
this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose
chattering voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess
Mary's room.
2285
"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling in,
and sinking heavily into an armchair.
2286
She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's toilet which rendered her
fresh and prettyface yet more attractive.
2287
"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she began.
"They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing room and
we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself up at
all!"
2288
The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and
merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary
should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact
that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
her companions' not having the least conception that it could be
otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her
beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on
the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she
submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women
quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so plain that
neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing
her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm conviction
women have that dress can make a face pretty.
2289
"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life
may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"
2290
It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary
that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little
princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were
placed in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged
lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They
forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered,
and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that
face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three
changes to which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair had
been arranged on the top of her head (a style that quite altered and
spoiled her looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a pale-blue
scarf, the little princess walked twice round her, now adjusting a fold
of the dress with her little hand, now arranging the scarf and looking
at her with her head bent first on one side and then on the other.
2291
"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No,
Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little
gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said to
the maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see,
Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling
with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.
2292
But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained
sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in
the mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to
burst into sobs.
2293
"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more
little effort."
2294
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to
Princess Mary.
2295
"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she
said.
2296
The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who was
laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping of
birds.
2297
"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.
2298
Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the birds
was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large, thoughtful
eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and imploringly at
them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel to insist.
2299
"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess. "Didn't I
tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to Mademoiselle
Bourienne, "Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does not suit in the
least. Not in the least! Please change it."
2300
"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to
me," answered a voice struggling with tears.
2301
Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to themselves
that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse than usual,
but it was too late. She was looking at them with an expression they
both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This expression in
Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never inspired fear in
anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her face, she became
mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.
2302
"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary gave
no answer, she left the room.
2303
Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's request,
she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look in her
glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with downcast eyes and
pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and strangely attractive
being rose in her imagination, and carried her into a totally different
happy world of his own. She fancied a child, her own- such as she had
seen the day before in the arms of her nurse's daughter- at her own
breast, the husband standing by and gazing tenderly at her and the
child. "But no, it is impossible, I am too ugly," she thought.
2304
"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the
maid's voice at the door.
2305
She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking,
and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and,
her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit by a
lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments. A
painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly love
for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess Mary
dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most deeply
hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide this
feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it grew. "O
God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these temptations of
the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile fancies, so as
peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she put that question
than God gave her the answer in her own heart. "Desire nothing for
thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or envious. Man's future and thy
own fate must remain hidden from thee, but live so that thou mayest be
ready for anything. If it be God's will to prove thee in the duties of
marriage, be ready to fulfill His will." With this consoling thought
(but yet with a hope for the fulfillment of her forbidden earthly
longing) Princess Mary sighed, and having crossed herself went down,
thinking neither of her gown and coiffure nor of how she would go in
nor of what she would say. What could all that matter in comparison
with the will of God, without Whose care not a hair of man's head can
fall?
2306
CHAPTER IV
2307
When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already in
the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle
Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her heels,
the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little princess,
indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!" Princess Mary saw
them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince Vasili's face, serious
for an instant at the sight of her, but immediately smiling again, and
the little princess curiously noting the impression "Marie" produced on
the visitors. And she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and
pretty face, and her unusually animated look which was fixed on him,
but him she could not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and
handsome moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili
approached first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her
hand and answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she
remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still could
not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and she
touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful
light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was
struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a button
of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in, slightly
swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked with
beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not
thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready or
eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable in
society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man
lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and
betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an
anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was
dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It was
evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long time. "If
anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but I don't want
to"' he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to women Anatole
had a manner which particularly inspires in them curiosity, awe, and
even love- a supercilious consciousness of his own superiority. It was
was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know you, but why should I
bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of course." Perhaps he did
not really think this when he met women- even probably he did not, for
in general he thought very little- but his looks and manner gave that
impression. The princess felt this, and as if wishing to show him that
she did not even dare expect to interest him, she turned to his father.
The conversation was general and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's
voice and little downy lip that lifted over her white teeth. She met
Prince Vasili with that playful manner often employed by lively chatty
people, and consisting in the assumption that between the person they
so address and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established
jokes and amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really
exist- just as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted
her tone and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly
knew, into these amusing recollections of things that had never
occurred. Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess
Mary felt herself pleasantly made to share in these merry
reminiscences.
2308
"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to
ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in
French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's39
receptions where you always ran away; you remember cette chere
Annette!"
39
Anna Pavlovna.
2309
"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"
2310
"And our little tea table?"
2311
"Oh, yes!"
2312
"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked
Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your
brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her
finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"
2313
"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his
son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away
and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he
himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the
door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning to
Princess Mary.
2314
When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized
the opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.
2315
She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since Anatole had
left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole answered the
Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a smile, talked to
her about her native land. When he saw the pretty little Bourienne,
Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not find Bald Hills dull
either. "Not at all bad!" he thought, examining her, "not at all bad,
that little companion! I hope she will bring her along with her when
we're married, la petite est gentille."40
40
The little one is charming.
2316
The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and considering
what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed him. "What are
Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince Vasili is a shallow
braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine specimen," he grumbled to
himself. What angered him was that the coming of these visitors revived
in his mind an unsettled question he always tried to stifle, one about
which he always deceived himself. The question was whether he could
ever bring himself to part from his daughter and give her to a husband.
The prince never directly asked himself that question, knowing
beforehand that he would have to answer it justly, and justice clashed
not only with his feelings but with the very possibility of life. Life
without Princess Mary, little as he seemed to value her, was
unthinkable to him. "And why should she marry?" he thought. "To be
unhappy for certain. There's Lise, married to Andrew- a better husband
one would think could hardly be found nowadays- but is she contented
with her lot? And who would marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward!
They'll take her for her connections and wealth. Are there no women
living unmarried, and even the happier for it?" So thought Prince
Bolkonski while dressing, and yet the question he was always putting
off demanded an immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son
with the evident intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would
probably ask for an answer. His birth and position in society were not
bad. "Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but
he must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see."
2317
"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added aloud.
2318
He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess' dress,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's unbecoming coiffure,
Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles, and the loneliness of
his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got herself up like a
fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is shameless, and he
ignores her!"
2319
He went straight up to Prince Vasili.
2320
"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"
2321
"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual
rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please
love and befriend him."
2322
Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.
2323
"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and kiss
me," and he offered his cheek.
2324
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and
perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his
father had told him to expect.
2325
Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it and began
questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept glancing at Princess
Mary.
2326
"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating
Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
daughter.
2327
"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said he.
"Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for the
visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."
2328
"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with a
blush.
2329
"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his
daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain
enough as it is."
2330
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who
was reduced to tears.
2331
"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well," said
Prince Vasili.
2332
"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,
turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."
2333
"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile beside
the old prince.
2334
"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught to
read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me, my
dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old man,
scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
2335
"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able to
restrain his laughter.
2336
"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the Tsar
and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve. Well,
are you off to the front?"
2337
"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole, turning to his father
with a laugh.
2338
"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"
laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
Prince Bolkonski frowned.
2339
"You may go," he said to Anatole.
2340
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
2341
"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"
said the old prince to Prince Vasili.
2342
"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
is much better than ours."
2343
"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took
Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the old
prince.
2344
"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from her?"
said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it tomorrow!
Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You know my
principles- everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow in your
presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and I'll
see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all the same to me!"
he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting from his son.
2345
"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a crafty
man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so keen-sighted
companion. "You know, you see right through people. Anatole is no
genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent son or
kinsman."
2346
"All right, all right, we'll see!"
2347
As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of
Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real
till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing
immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have
been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full
of significance.
2348
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a
future family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them
away and tried to conceal them.
2349
"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be
reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
that I do not like him."
2350
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.
2351
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkonski, to reading
aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and
reproached her for yielding to a man without being married.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she
told this story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince,
had appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mere would
appear and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in
Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time she was talking to
Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did
not even for a moment consider what she should do), but all this had
long been familiar to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just
grouped itself around him and she wished and tried to please him as
much as possible.
2352
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.
2353
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
2354
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and
the look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But
Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not
to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's little foot,
which he was then touching with his own under the clavichord.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was also new
to the princess.
2355
"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now, and how
happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband? Can it
be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face, but still
feeling his eyes gazing at her.
2356
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the
courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near
to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and
kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but then
he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle
Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.
2357
"What delicacy! " thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"
(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not
value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and
kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.
2358
"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she said. And
smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.
2359
CHAPTER V
2360
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
2361
"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind- yes,
kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it
seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the
dark corner. And this someone was he- the devil- and he was also this
man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
2362
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
2363
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone,
now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre
mere rebuking her for her fall.
2364
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled to her the time
when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie,
sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy feather bed for the
third time, muttering to herself.
2365
"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess repeated.
"I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my fault!" and her
voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.
2366
The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard him
pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though
2367
he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more
pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter,
whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would
consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he should
act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more.
2368
"The first man that turns up- she forgets her father and everything
else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her tail and is
unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she knew I should
notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that idiot had eyes
only for Bourienne- I shall have to get rid of her. And how is it she
has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride for herself she
might at least have some for my sake! She must be shown that the
blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at Bourienne. No, she
has no pride... but I'll let her see...."
2369
The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a
mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to be
parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this
thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.
2370
"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting
the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I
never invited them. They came to disturb my life- and there is not much
of it left."
2371
"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by the
shirt.
2372
Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and
therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive expression
of the face that emerged from the shirt.
2373
"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.
2374
Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of his
master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince
Vasili and his son.
2375
"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."
2376
"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his feet
into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing gown,
he went to the couch on which he slept.
2377
Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle Bourienne,
they quite understood one another as to the first part of their
romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they understood that
they had much to say to one another in private and so they had been
seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one another alone. When
Princess Mary went to her father's room at the usual hour, Mademoiselle
Bourienne and Anatole met in the conservatory.
2378
Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special trepidation.
It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that her fate would
be decided that day, but that they also knew what she thought about it.
She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince Vasili's valet,
who made her a low bow when she met him in the corridor carrying hot
water.
2379
The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of
his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking
expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry
hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in
arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,
repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.
2380
He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.
2381
"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an
unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not
come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski
referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful eyes.
Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you know
my principles, I refer it to you."
2382
"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing pale
and then blushing.
2383
"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili finds you
to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to you on his
pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How understand
it'!... And I ask you!"
2384
"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.
2385
"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to get
married. What about you? That's what I want to know."
2386
The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with disapproval,
but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her fate would be
decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not to see the gaze
under which she felt that she could not think, but would only be able
to submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to do your will, but
if I had to express my own desire..." She had no time to finish. The
old prince interrupted her.
2387
"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry and
take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the wife, while
you..."
2388
The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on his
daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.
2389
"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,
Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to
choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness
depends on your decision. Never mind me!"
2390
"But I do not know, Father!"
2391
"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry you or
anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room, think it over,
and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence: yes or no. I know
you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but you had better think
it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he still shouted when
the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already staggered out of the
study.
2392
Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had said
about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be sure,
but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of it. She
was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing nor
hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of
Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps
away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to
her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole looked
at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the waist of
Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.
2393
"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say.
Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand it.
At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole
bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in
a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders went
to the door that led to his own apartments.
2394
An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old prince; he
added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came to her
Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding the weeping
Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her hair. The
princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance were
looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle Bourienne's
pretty face.
2395
"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said Mademoiselle
Bourienne.
2396
"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will try
to do all I can for your happiness."
2397
"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being so
carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."
2398
"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile. "Calm
yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went out.
2399
Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a snuffbox
in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion on his
face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself regretting and
laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary entered. He
hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.
2400
"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both hands.
Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands. Decide, my
dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a daughter!"
2401
He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.
2402
"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a
proposition to you in his pupil's- I mean, his son's- name. Do you wish
or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he
shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.
Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning
to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"
2403
"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my life
from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively, glancing
at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.
2404
"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince Bolkonski,
frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss her, but only
bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and pressed her hand so
that she winced and uttered a cry.
2405
Prince Vasili rose.
2406
"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never
forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching
this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so
long. Say 'perhaps.'"
2407
"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you for
the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."
2408
"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have seen
you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the old
prince. "Very, very glad to glad to have seen you," repeated he,
embracing Prince Vasili.
2409
"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My vocation
is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the happiness of love
and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will arrange poor Amelie's
happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so passionately repents.
I will do all I can to arrange the match between them. If he is not
rich I will give her the means; I will ask my father and Andrew. I
shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so unfortunate, a
stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how passionately she must love
him if she could so far forget herself! Perhaps I might have done the
same!..." thought Princess Mary.
2410
CHAPTER VI
2411
It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till midwinter
was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's
handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm
and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read
the letter.
2412
Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the house,
on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the room and
found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing at the same
time.
2413
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still
living with the Rostovs.
2414
"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry, prepared to
sympathize in any way.
2415
The count sobbed yet more.
2416
"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling boy...
the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the
little countess!"
2417
Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief wiped
the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried her own
eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and till
teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's help,
would inform her.
2418
At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war news and
about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been received
from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that they might
very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each time that these
hints began to make the countess anxious and she glanced uneasily at
the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very adroitly turned the
conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha, who, of the whole
family, was the most gifted with a capacity to feel any shades of
intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her ears from the
beginning of the meal and was certain that there was some secret
between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had something to do
with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was preparing them for it.
Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how sensitive her mother was to
anything relating to Nikolenka, did not venture to ask any questions at
dinner, but she was too excited to eat anything and kept wriggling
about on her chair regardless of her governess' remarks. After dinner,
she rushed head long after Anna Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung
herself on her neck as soon as she overtook her in the sitting room.
2419
"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"
2420
"Nothing, my dear."
2421
"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know
something."
2422
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.
2423
"You are a little slyboots," she said.
2424
"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha, reading
confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.
2425
"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
mamma."
2426
"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once."
2427
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter,
on condition that she should tell no one.
2428
"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself, "I won't
tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.
2429
"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful triumph.
2430
"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.
2431
Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced on
Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.
2432
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.
2433
"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears.
2434
"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked
Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very
glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself so.
You are all blubberers and understand nothing."
2435
Natasha smiled through her tears.
2436
"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.
2437
"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an officer."
2438
"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived
you. Let us go to Mamma."
2439
Petya paced the room in silence for a time.
2440
"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of
those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have killed
so many that there'd have been a heap of them."
2441
"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"
2442
"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.
2443
"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's
silence.
2444
Sonya smiled.
2445
"Do I remember Nicholas?"
2446
"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him perfectly,
remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive gesture,
evidently wishing to give her words a very definite meaning. "I
remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said. "But I don't
remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."
2447
"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.
2448
"It's not that I don't remember- I know what he is like, but not as I
remember Nikolenka. Him- I just shut my eyes and remember, but Boris...
No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."
2449
"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her
friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to
say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was
out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,
whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him as
long as I live."
2450
Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and said
nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there was
such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt
anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.
2451
"Shall you write to him?" she asked.
2452
Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas, and
whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already an
officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of herself
and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had taken on
himself?
2453
"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,
blushing.
2454
"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"
2455
Sonya smiled.
2456
"No."
2457
"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."
2458
"Why should you be ashamed?"
2459
"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."
2460
"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's
previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in
spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new Count
Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant Natasha's
Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"
2461
"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.
2462
"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya, with
the air of an old brigadier.
2463
The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at dinner.
On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her eyes fixed on
a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a snuffbox, while the
tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna, with the letter,
came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.
2464
"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her. "Come
later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.
2465
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.
2466
At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna
Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then silence,
then both voices together with glad intonations, and then footsteps.
Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud expression of
a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation and admits the
public to appreciate his skill.
2467
"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the
countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait
and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her lips.
2468
When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him, embraced his
bald head, over which she again looked at the letter and the portrait,
and in order to press them again to her lips, she slightly pushed away
the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya now entered the room,
and the reading of the letter began. After a brief description of the
campaign and the two battles in which he had taken part, and his
promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his father's and mother's hands
asking for their blessing, and that he kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya.
Besides that, he sent greetings to Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss,
and his old nurse, and asked them to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he
loved and thought of just the same as ever." When she heard this Sonya
blushed so that tears came into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks
turned upon her, ran away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at
full speed with her dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and
smiling, plumped down on the floor. The countess was crying.
2469
"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one should
be glad and not cry."
2470
This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked at
her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the
countess.
2471
Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were
considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she did
not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses, and
Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the letter
each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it fresh
proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary, how
joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of
whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son
about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count, that
son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that this
son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange surroundings, a
manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his own, without help or
guidance. The universal experience of ages, showing that children do
grow imperceptibly from the cradle to manhood, did not exist for the
countess. Her son's growth toward manhood, at each of its stages, had
seemed as extraordinary to her as if there had never existed the
millions of human beings who grew up in the same way. As twenty years
before, it seemed impossible that the little creature who lived
somewhere under her heart would ever cry, suck her breast, and begin to
speak, so now she could not believe that that little creature could be
this strong, brave man, this model son and officer that, judging by
this letter, he now was.
2472
"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the
descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about
himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he himself,
I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about his
sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has remembered
everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was only so
high- I always said...."
2473
For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of
letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied out,
while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of the
count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and equipment of
the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna Mikhaylovna,
practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor with army
authorities to secure advantageous means of communication for herself
and her son. She had opportunities of sending her letters to the Grand
Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the Guards. The Rostovs
supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was quite a definite address,
and that if a letter reached the Grand Duke in command of the Guards
there was no reason why it should not reach the Pavlograd regiment,
which was presumably somewhere in the same neighborhood. And so it was
decided to send the letters and money by the Grand Duke's courier to
Boris and Boris was to forward them to Nicholas. The letters were from
the old count, the countess, Petya, Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and
finally there were six thousand rubles for his outfit and various other
things the old count sent to his son.
2474
CHAPTER VII
2475
On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before
Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors- the
Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia, spent
the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come straight
to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.
2476
That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him that
the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles from Olmutz
and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money for him.
Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops, after
their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp swarmed
with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all sorts of
tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast, celebrating
awards they had received for the campaign, and made expeditions to
Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who had recently
opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses. Rostov, who had
just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought Denisov's horse,
Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and the sutlers. On
receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow officer to Olmutz, dined
there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set off alone to the Guards'
camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not yet had time to get his
uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket, decorated with a soldier's
cross, equally shabby cadet's riding breeches lined with worn leather,
and an officer's saber with a sword knot. The Don horse he was riding
was one he had bought from a Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a
crumpled hussar cap stuck jauntily back on one side of his head. As he
rode up to the camp he thought how he would impress Boris and all his
comrades of the Guards by his appearance- that of a fighting hussar who
had been under fire.
2477
The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip,
parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy
stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian authorities
had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every halting place.
The regiments had entered and left the town with their bands playing,
and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had marched all the way in step
(a practice on which the Guards prided themselves), the officers on
foot and at their proper posts. Boris had been quartered, and had
marched all the way, with Berg who was already in command of a company.
Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during the campaign, had gained
the confidence of his superiors by his promptitude and accuracy and had
arranged his money matters very satisfactorily. Boris, during the
campaign, had made the acquaintance of many persons who might prove
useful to him, and by a letter of recommendation he had brought from
Pierre had become acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom
he hoped to obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and
Boris, having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and
neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to
them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees. Boris,
in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little
pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting
Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently thinking about
the game as he always thought only of whatever he was engaged on.
2478
"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.
2479
"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing his
hand.
2480
At that moment the door opened.
2481
"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you
petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian
nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.
2482
"Dear me, how you have changed!"
2483
Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady and
replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace his
friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of youth,
that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner
different from that of its elders which is often insincere, Nicholas
wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He wanted to
pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him- a thing everybody did.
But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a quiet, friendly way
and kissed him three times.
2484
They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when
young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense
changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which
they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since they
last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had taken
place in them.
2485
"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,
not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger
and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his own
mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's loud
voice, popped her head in at the door.
2486
"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.
2487
"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did not
expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday by
Bolkonski- an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I did not
think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you? Been
under fire already?" asked Boris.
2488
Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George
fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,
glanced at Berg with a smile.
2489
"As you see," he said.
2490
"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a
splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode
with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every
advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I
can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our
officers."
2491
And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of his
hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the pleasures
and advantages of service under members of the Imperial family.
2492
"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."
2493
Boris made a grimace.
2494
"If you really want it," said he.
2495
He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
for wine.
2496
"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.
2497
Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both
arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he
glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind
the letter.
2498
"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy purse
that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on our pay. I
can tell you for myself..."
2499
"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter from
home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk everything
over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be out of your
way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he exclaimed, and
immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking amiably into his
face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his words, he added,
"Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from my heart as to an
old acquaintance."
2500
"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg, getting
up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.
2501
"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.
2502
Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of dust,
stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples
upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having
assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had been
noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.
2503
"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the letter.
2504
"Why?"
2505
"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them such a
fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly. "Well,
have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have some!"
2506
In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of recommendation
to Bagration which the old countess at Anna Mikhaylovna's advice had
obtained through an acquaintance and sent to her son, asking him to
take it to its destination and make use of it.
2507
"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter under
the table.
2508
"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.
2509
"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
for!"
2510
"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the
address. "This letter would be of great use to you."
2511
"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."
2512
"Why not?" inquired Boris.
2513
"It's a lackey's job!"
2514
"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his
head.
2515
"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the point...
Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.
2516
"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I
should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."
2517
"Why?"
2518
"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try to
make as successful a career of it as possible."
2519
"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.
2520
He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
trying in vain to find the answer to some question.
2521
Old Gabriel brought in the wine.
2522
"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink with
you. I can't."
2523
"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?" asked
Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.
2524
"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered Boris.
2525
Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg
returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three
officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and
how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They
spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke, and
told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual, kept
silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in connection
with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he related with gusto
how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the Grand Duke when the
latter made a tour of the regiments and was annoyed at the irregularity
of a movement. With a pleasant smile Berg related how the Grand Duke
had ridden up to him in a violent passion, shouting: "Arnauts!"
("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's favorite expression when he was in a
rage) and called for the company commander.
2526
"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I knew
I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know the Army
Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do the Lord's
Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my company, and so
my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg stood up and
showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his cap, and really
it would have been difficult for a face to express greater respect and
self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he stormed at me, as the saying
is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It was not a matter of life but
rather of death, as the saying is. 'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To
Siberia!'" said Berg with a sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right
so I kept silent; was not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he
shouted. Still I remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The
next day it was not even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's
what keeping one's head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg,
lighting his pipe and emitting rings of smoke.
2527
"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.
2528
But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and
skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and where
he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about it,
and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his
Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle
generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been,
as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not
at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man and would on
no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to
tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily,
and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to
his hearers- who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and
had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to
hear just such a story- they would either not have believed him or,
still worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since
what generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not
happened to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a
trot and that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran
as hard as he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell
everything as it really happened, it would have been necessary to make
an effort of will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to
tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers
expected a story of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement,
he had flown like a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right
and left, how his saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted,
and so on. And so he told them all that.
2529
In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot imagine
what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack," Prince Andrew,
whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince Andrew, who liked to
help young men, was flattered by being asked for his assistance and
being well disposed toward Boris, who had managed to please him the day
before, he wished to do what the young man wanted. Having been sent
with papers from Kutuzov to the Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris,
hoping to find him alone. When he came in and saw an hussar of the line
recounting his military exploits (Prince Andrew could not endure that
sort of man), he gave Boris a pleasant smile, frowned as with
half-closed eyes he looked at Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and
sat down languidly on the sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped
in on bad company. Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not
care, this was a mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw
that he too seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.
2530
In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of
the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of view,
regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the newcomer
was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and became silent.
Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff, and what, without
indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.
2531
"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently reluctant to
say more in the presence of a stranger.
2532
Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as
was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies
would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that he
could give no opinion on such an important government order, and Berg
laughed gaily.
2533
"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris, "we
will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to me
after the review and we will do what is possible."
2534
And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to Rostov,
whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now changing to
anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I think you were
talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"
2535
"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the
aide-de-camp.
2536
Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him. With a
slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many stories now
told about that affair!"
2537
"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly
grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But
our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's
fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those
fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!"
2538
"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet
and particularly amiable smile.
2539
A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man's
self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.
2540
"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and, frankly,
I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."
2541
"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of
quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree with
you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient
self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.
In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more
serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of
yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to
displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and where
to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either myself or you
as having been at all insulted, and as a man older than you, my advice
is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday after the review I
shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed Prince Andrew, and
with a bow to them both he went out.
2542
Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to
have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode home.
Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that affected
adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question that worried
him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he would have at
seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud man when covered by
his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of all the men he knew
there was none he would so much like to have for a friend as that very
adjutant whom he so hated.
2543
CHAPTER VIII
2544
The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the
Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia and
those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors, the
Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the
Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.
2545
From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move, forming up
on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and bayonets
moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with banners flying,
formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other similar masses of
infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the rhythmic beat of
hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red, and green braided
uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front mounted on black,
roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with the brazen clatter
of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the gun carriages and
with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery which crawled between
the infantry and cavalry and took up its appointed position. Not only
the generals in full parade uniforms, with their thin or thick waists
drawn in to the utmost, their red necks squeezed into their stiff
collars, and wearing scarves and all their decorations, not only the
elegant, pomaded officers, but every soldier with his freshly washed
and shaven face and his weapons clean and polished to the utmost, and
every horse groomed till its coat shone like satin and every hair of
its wetted mane lay smooth- felt that no small matter was happening,
but an important and solemn affair. Every general and every soldier was
conscious of his own insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that
ocean of men, and yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as
a part of that enormous whole.
2546
From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by
ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were drown
up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three lines: the
cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind that again the
infantry.
2547
A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The
three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's fighting
army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front); those
recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the line;
and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines, under
one command, and in a like order.
2548
Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming! They're
coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final preparation
swept over all the troops.
2549
From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen
approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light gust
of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on the
lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their staffs. It
looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was expressing its
joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was heard shouting:
"Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at
2550
sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became
silent.
2551
In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard. This was
the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank, and the
trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general march. It
seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as if the army
itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally burst into
music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of the Emperor
Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of greeting, and the
first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly, continuously, and
joyfully that the men themselves were awed by their multitude and the
immensity of the power they constituted.
2552
Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar
approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in
that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of
might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this
triumph.
2553
He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass (and he
himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and water,
commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and so he could
not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence of that
word.
2554
"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment after
another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and then
"Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening roar.
2555
Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and immobility
seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it became alive,
its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along which he had
already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar of those
voices, amid the square masses of troops standing motionless as if
turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the suites moved
carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in front of them
two men- the Emperors. Upon them the undivided, tensely passionate
attention of that whole mass of men was concentrated.
2556
The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse
Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his
pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's
attention.
2557
Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight had
recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within twenty
paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of his
handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness and
ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every
movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.
2558
Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in French
to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.
2559
Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a still
stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show that love in
some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready to cry. The
Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few words to him.
2560
"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?" thought
Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"
2561
The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I
thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a
voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!
2562
"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of
them."
2563
"Oh, to die, to die for him " thought Rostov.
2564
The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the
soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"
2565
Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all his
might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout, if
only to express his rapture fully.
2566
The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided.
2567
"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even this
indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like everything
else the Tsar did.
2568
That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the narrow
pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the bobtailed bay
mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up the reins, and he
moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying sea of aides-de-camp.
Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at other regiments, till at
last only his white plumes were visible to Rostov from amid the suites
that surrounded the Emperors.
2569
Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski, sitting his
horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their quarrel of
yesterday and the question presented itself whether he ought or ought
not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now thought. "Is it
worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment? At a time of such
love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do any of our
quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive everybody now."
2570
When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops began
a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently purchased
from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron- that is,
alone and in full view of the Emperor.
2571
Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman, spurred
Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in which the
animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to his chest, his
tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the Emperor's eye upon
him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a high and graceful
action, as if flying through the air without touching the ground.
2572
Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and feeling
himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a frowning but
blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed it.
2573
"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.
2574
"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire
this instant!" thought Rostov.
2575
When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also
Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,
about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about
Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if the
Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.
2576
But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander.
His every word and movement was described with ecstasy.
2577
They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against the
enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor himself
they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might: so thought
Rostov and most of the officers after the review.
2578
All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
would have made them.
2579
CHAPTER IX
2580
The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his
comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see
Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for himself
the best post he could- preferably that of adjutant to some important
personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most attractive.
"It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him ten thousand
rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe to anybody and
not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my brains have to
make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must avail myself of
them!" he reflected.
2581
He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance of
the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were stationed
and the two Emperors were living with their suites, households, and
courts only strengthened his desire to belong to that higher world.
2582
He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these
exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages
with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military
men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the
Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be
aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,
Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even
the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a
great many officers like him were always coming there and that
everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather
because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to
Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for
Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large hall
probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now stood,
and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a clavichord. One
adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table in a Persian
dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout Nesvitski, lay on a bed
with his arms under his head, laughing with an officer who had sat down
beside him. A third was playing a Viennese waltz on the clavichord,
while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang the tune. Bolkonski was
not there. None of these gentlemen changed his position on seeing
Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris addressed turned round
crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty and that he should go
through the door on the left into the reception room if he wished to
see him. Boris thanked him and went to the reception room, where he
found some ten officers and generals.
2583
When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously (with
that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says, "If it
were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was listening
to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very erect,
almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his purple
face, reporting something.
2584
"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to
2585
the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he
affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris,
Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him
imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with a
cheerful smile.
2586
At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised, that
in the army, besides the subordination and discipline prescribed in the
military code, which he and the others knew in the regiment, there was
another, more important, subordination, which made this tight-laced,
purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain Prince Andrew, for
his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant Drubetskoy. More than
ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not according to the written
code, but under this unwritten law. He felt now that merely by having
been recommended to Prince Andrew he had already risen above the
general who at the front had the power to annihilate him, a lieutenant
of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to him and took his hand.
2587
"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about
with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the
dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to it!"
2588
Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to as
something generally known. But it the first time he had heard
Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."
2589
"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have been
thinking about you."
2590
"Yes, I was thinking"- for some reason Boris could not help blushing-
"of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter from Prince
Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear the Guards won't
be in action," he added as if in apology.
2591
"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.
"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at your
disposal."
2592
While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general, that
gentleman- evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the advantages of
the unwritten code of subordination- looked so fixedly at the
presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he had to
say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned away and
waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the commander in
chief's room.
2593
"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said Prince
Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the clavichord was.
"It's no use your going to the commander in chief. He would say a lot
of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would not be bad as
regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but nothing more would
come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us aides-de-camp and
adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a good friend, an adjutant
general and an excellent fellow, Prince Dolgorukov; and though you may
not know it, the fact is that now Kutuzov with his staff and all of us
count for nothing. Everything is now centered round the Emperor. So we
will go to Dolgorukov; I have to go there anyhow and I have already
spoken to him about you. We shall see whether he cannot attach you to
himself or find a place for you somewhere nearer the sun."
2594
Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a young
man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining help of
this kind for another, which from pride he would never accept for
himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers success and
which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris' cause and went with
him to Dolgorukov.
2595
It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.
2596
That same day a council of war had been held in which all the members
of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that council,
contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and Prince
Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately and give
battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when Prince
Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find Dolgorukov.
Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of the day's
council, at which the party of the young had triumphed. The voices of
those who counseled delay and advised waiting for something else before
advancing had been so completely silenced and their arguments confuted
by such conclusive evidence of the advantages of attacking that what
had been discussed at the council- the coming battle and the victory
that would certainly result from it- no longer seemed to be in the
future but in the past. All the advantages were on our side. Our
enormous forces, undoubtedly superior to Napoleon's, were concentrated
in one place, the troops inspired by the Emperors' presence were eager
for action. The strategic position where the operations would take
place was familiar in all its details to the Austrian General
Weyrother: a lucky accident had ordained that the Austrian army should
maneuver the previous year on the very fields where the French had now
to be fought; the adjacent locality was known and shown in every detail
on the maps, and Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking
nothing.
2597
Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just
returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud of
the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his protege,
but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand said
nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts which
were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince Andrew in
French.
2598
"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that the
one that will result from it will be as victorious! However, dear
fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to having been
unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother. What exactitude,
what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what foresight for
every eventuality, every possibility even to the smallest detail! No,
my dear fellow, no conditions better than our present ones could have
been devised. This combination of Austrian precision with Russian
valor- what more could be wished for?"
2599
"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.
2600
"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte has
decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received from him
today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.
2601
"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.
2602
"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain time. I
tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most
amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that we
could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of
course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General
Bonaparte.'"
2603
"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.
2604
"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You know
Bilibin- he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him as
'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"
2605
Dolgorukov laughed merrily.
2606
"Only that?" said Bolkonski.
2607
"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the
address. He is a wise and clever fellow."
2608
"What was it?"
2609
"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't it?"
2610
"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.
2611
"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him- the
present Emperor- more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met a
more cunning or subtle diplomatist- you know, a combination of French
adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale about him and
Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how to handle him.
You know the story of the handkerchief? It is delightful!"
2612
And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince
Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,
purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking at
Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how Markov
immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up without touching
Bonaparte's.
2613
"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as a
petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before Prince
Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon Dolgorukov to
the Emperor.
2614
"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and
pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be
very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young
man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of
good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another
time!"
2615
Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher powers
as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious that here he
was in contact with the springs that set in motion the enormous
movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt himself a tiny,
obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince Dolgorukov out
into the corridor and met- coming out of the door of the Emperor's room
by which Dolgorukov had entered- a short man in civilian clothes with a
clever face and sharply projecting jaw which, without spoiling his
face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and shiftiness of expression. This
short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an intimate friend and stared at
Prince Andrew with cool intensity, walking straight toward him and
evidently expecting him to bow or to step out of his way. Prince Andrew
did neither: a look of animosity appeared on his face and the other
turned away and went down the side of the corridor.
2616
"Who was that?" asked Boris.
2617
"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men-
the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is such
men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a sigh
he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.
2618
Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle of
Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or Dolgorukov
again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.
2619
CHAPTER X
2620
At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which
Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,
moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into
action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two
thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the Cossacks
and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and infantry
battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then Generals
Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants. All the fear
before action which he had experienced as previously, all the inner
struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of distinguishing himself
as a true hussar in this battle, had been wasted. Their squadron
remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent that day in a dull and
wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard firing in front and
shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought back (there were not
many of them), and at last he saw how a whole detachment of French
cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya of Cossacks. Evidently
the affair was over and, though not big, had been a successful
engagement. The men and officers returning spoke of a brilliant
victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and the capture of a
whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny after a sharp night
frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day was in keeping with
the news of victory which was conveyed, not only by the tales of those
who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful expression on the
faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and adjutants, as they passed
Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who had vainly suffered all the
dread that precedes a battle and had spent that happy day in
inactivity, was all the more depressed.
2621
"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted Denisov,
who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some food.
2622
The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.
2623
"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,
indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot by
two Cossacks.
2624
One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
taken from the prisoner.
2625
"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.
2626
"If you like, your honor!"
2627
The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.
The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German
accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when he
heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,
addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been
taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to
seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were there.
And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!" and
stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where he
was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,
imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly
discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our
rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which was
so alien to us.
2628
The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being the
richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought it.
2629
"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly to
Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.
2630
Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
2631
"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to make
him go on.
2632
"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.
2633
All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road behind
him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment
everyone was in his place, waiting.
2634
Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.
Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected mood
amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every thought of
himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his nearness to
the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made up to him for
the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the longed-for moment
of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and without looking round,
he was ecstatically conscious of his approach. He felt it not only from
the sound of the hoofs of the approaching cavalcade, but because as he
drew near everything grew brighter, more joyful, more significant, and
more festive around him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun
shedding beams of mild and majestic light around, and already he felt
himself enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly,
calm, and majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord
with Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was
heard the Emperor's voice.
2635
"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.
2636
"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared to
that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"
2637
The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face was
even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the review.
It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that it
suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was the
face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the squadron,
the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not more than
two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was going on in
Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood everything), at
any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two seconds into Rostov's
face. A gentle, mild light poured from them. Then all at once he raised
his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse with his left foot, and
galloped on.
2638
The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the
battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at twelve
o'clock left the third column with which he had been and galloped
toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars, several
adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the action.
2639
This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron, was
represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the Emperor
and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the
battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were
retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had
passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau
itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the
market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the
Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom there
had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his suite of
officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare, a
different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and bending
to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes and looked
at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered head. The
wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity
to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor's rather
round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how
his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's side with the
spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did
not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms
to place him on a stretcher that had been brought. The soldier groaned.
2640
"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
2641
Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was
riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a
terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"
2642
The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within sight
of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to us at
the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the
vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double ration
of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs resounded even
more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov celebrated his
promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had already drunk
enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's health. "Not
'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official dinners," said
he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good, enchanting, and great
man! Let us drink to his health and to the certain defeat of the
French!"
2643
"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as at
Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We
will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not
saying it right, I have drunk a good deal- but that is how I feel, and
so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"
2644
"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
2645
And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.
2646
When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten filled
others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand to the
soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white chest
showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the light
of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.
2647
"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.
2648
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
2649
Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.
2650
"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen in
love with the Tsar," he said.
2651
"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a lofty,
beautiful feeling, such a..."
2652
"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."
2653
"No, you don't understand!"
2654
And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming of
what happiness it would be to die- not in saving the Emperor's life (he
did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before his eyes.
He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the Russian arms
and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only man to
experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding the
battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army were
then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the glory
of the Russian arms.
2655
CHAPTER XI
2656
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his
physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and
among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was unwell.
He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around him
reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong impression
made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and wounded.
2657
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a
flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At
midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off
with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.
2658
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a
meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.
2659
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar, and
remained alone with him for a long time.
2660
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced two
days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange of shots
retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the nineteenth, a
great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted till the morning
of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of Austerlitz was fought.
2661
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running to
and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the Emperor's
headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this activity reached
Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the commanders of columns. By
evening, the adjutants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army,
and in the night from the nineteenth to the twentieth, the whole eighty
thousand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices,
and the army swayed and started in one enormous mass six miles long.
2662
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's headquarters
in the morning and had started the whole movement that followed was
like the first movement of the main wheel of a large tower clock. One
wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and a third, and wheels
began to revolve faster and faster, levers and cogwheels to work,
chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands to advance with
regular motion as a result of all that activity.
2663
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the
military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and
just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is
transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse
has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage one
another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their
movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though
it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment comes
when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel begins to
creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of which are
beyond its ken.
2664
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of innumerable
wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement of the hands
which show the time, so the result of all the complicated human
activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions, desires,
remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and
enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz, the
so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow movement
of the hand on the dial of human history.
2665
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.
2666
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters and
after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
2667
Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something others
do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
2668
"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was sitting
at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your old fellow?
Out of sorts?"
2669
"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
heard."
2670
"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when he
talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when Bonaparte
fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."
2671
"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is Bonaparte
like? How did he impress you?"
2672
"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this
general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat is
so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is afraid,
afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"
2673
"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.
2674
"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me! That's
the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov, looking
round at Bilibin with a smile.
2675
"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should be
a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a chance
to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in our hands!
No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put yourself in a
position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe me in war the
energy of young men often shows the way better than all the experience
of old Cunctators."
2676
"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces are
situated," said Prince Andrew.
2677
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.
2678
"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting up he
spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been foreseen. If he
is standing before Brunn..."
2679
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
plan of a flanking movement.
2680
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which might
have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage that
Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew began
to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his own
plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed
absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.
2681
"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you can
say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.
2682
"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
2683
"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who, till
then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and now
was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings victory or
defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except your Kutuzov,
there is not a single Russian in command of a column! The commanders
are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le Prince de
Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally Prishprish, and so
on like all those Polish names."
2684
"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are now
two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a third,
Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."
2685
"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew. "I
wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out after
shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
2686
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking Kutuzov,
who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of tomorrow's
battle.
2687
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause, replied: "I
think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy and asked
him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But, my dear
general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after military
matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"
2688
CHAPTER XII
2689
Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his plans
to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held. All the
commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in chief's and
with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to come, were all
there at the appointed time.
2690
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the dissatisfied
and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of chairman and
president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt himself to be
at the head of a movement that had already become unrestrainable. He
was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a heavy cart. Whether he
was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not know, but rushed along
at headlong speed with no time to consider what this movement might
lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening to the enemy's picket
line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the Emperors, Russian and
Austrian, to report and explain, and to his headquarters where he had
dictated the dispositions in German, and now, much exhausted, he
arrived at Kutuzov's.
2691
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and
indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did not
reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had a
pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was
haughty and self-confident.
2692
Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions near
Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the commander in
chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself, Weyrother, and the
members of the council of war. They were drinking tea, and only awaited
Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last Bagration's orderly came
with the news that the prince could not attend. Prince Andrew came in
to inform the commander in chief of this and, availing himself of
permission previously given him by Kutuzov to be present at the
council, he remained in the room.
2693
"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said Weyrother,
hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on which an
enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.
2694
Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged over
his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low chair,
with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms. At the
sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an effort.
2695
"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and nodding his
head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
2696
If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading
that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was
absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his
contempt for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in
satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was asleep.
Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a moment, glanced
at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was asleep, took up a
paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to read out the
dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading which he also
read out:
2697
"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz and
Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."
2698
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began as
follows:
2699
"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right extends
along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there, while
we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his right, it
is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially if we
occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can both
fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between Schlappanitz
and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of Schlappanitz and
Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this object it is
necessary that... The first column marches... The second column
marches... The third column marches..." and so on, read Weyrother.
2700
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult
dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning
his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and
seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen. Exactly
opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed upon him
and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy Miloradovich in a
military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands on his knees, and
his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent, gazing at
Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the Austrian chief
of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked round significantly
at the other generals. But one could not tell from that significant
look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied or not with the
arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron who, with a subtle
smile that never left his typically southern French face during the
whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate fingers which rapidly
twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on which was a portrait. In the
middle of one of the longest sentences, he stopped the rotary motion of
the snuffbox, raised his head, and with inimical politeness lurking in
the corners of his thin lips interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say
something. But the Austrian general, continuing to read, frowned
angrily and jerked his elbows, as if to say: "You can tell me your
views later, but now be so good as to look at the map and listen."
Langeron lifted his eyes with an expression of perplexity, turned round
to Miloradovich as if seeking an explanation, but meeting the latter's
impressive but meaningless gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took
to twirling his snuffbox.
2701
"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud enough to
be heard.
2702
Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his hand
to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an
assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar locality.
He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had not clearly
heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother complied and
Dohkturov noted them down.
2703
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron
again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother or
at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry out
such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
aim was to show General Weyrother- who had read his dispositions with
as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children- that
he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him
something in military matters.
2704
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov opened
his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the mill wheel
is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if remarking, "So
you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed his eye again,
and let his head sink still lower.
2705
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's vanity
as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might easily
attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of this plan
perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a firm and
contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all
objections be they what they might.
2706
"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.
2707
"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.
2708
"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the smile
of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the treatment of a
case.
2709
"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack," said
Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round for
support to Miloradovich who was near him.
2710
But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
2711
"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the battlefield."
2712
Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it was
strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals and to
have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced himself of, but
had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
2713
"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard from
his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is retreating,
which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing his position."
(He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up a position in the
Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of trouble and all our
arrangements to the minutest detail remain the same."
2714
"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting an
opportunity to express his doubts.
2715
Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
generals.
2716
"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather for today, for it
is past midnight- cannot now be altered," said he. "You have heard
them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there is
nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."
2717
He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was past
midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
2718
The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to express
his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron, and
the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were right- he
did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to state his
views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account of court
and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and my life, my
life," he thought, "must be risked?"
2719
"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he thought.
And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of most distant,
most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he remembered his last
parting from his father and his wife; he remembered the days when he
first loved her. He thought of her pregnancy and felt sorry for her and
for himself, and in a nervously emotional and softened mood he went out
of the hut in which he was billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up
and down before it.
2720
The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more, none
of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even certainly,
I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall have to show all
I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its loss, the
concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation of all the
commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for which he had so
long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly and clearly
expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the Emperors.
All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one undertakes to
carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division- stipulates that no
one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads his division to the
decisive point, and gains the victory alone. "But death and suffering?"
suggested another voice. Prince Andrew, however, did not answer that
voice and went on dreaming of his triumphs. The dispositions for the
next battle are planned by him alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant
on Kutuzov's staff, but he does everything alone. The next battle is
won by him alone. Kutuzov is removed and he is appointed... "Well and
then?" asked the other voice. "If before that you are not ten times
wounded, killed, or betrayed, well... what then?..." "Well then,"
Prince Andrew answered himself, "I don't know what will happen and
don't want to know, and can't, but if I want this- want glory, want to
be known to men, want to be loved by them, it is not my fault that I
want it and want nothing but that and live only for that. Yes, for that
alone! I shall never tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I
love nothing but fame and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of
family- I fear nothing. And precious and dear as many persons are to
me- father, sister, wife- those dearest to me- yet dreadful and
unnatural as it seems, I would give them all at once for a moment of
glory, of triumph over men, of love from men I don't know and never
shall know, for the love of these men here," he thought, as he listened
to voices in Kutuzov's courtyard. The voices were those of the
orderlies who were packing up; one voice, probably a coachman's, was
teasing Kutuzov's old cook whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called
Tit. He was saying, "Tit, I say, Tit!"
2721
"Well?" returned the old man.
2722
"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.
2723
"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter of
the orderlies and servants.
2724
"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in
this mist!"
2725
CHAPTER XIII
2726
That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in front
of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the line in
couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master the
sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with our
army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind him; in
front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing, peer as he
would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray, now there
was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer where the
enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in his own
eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now the
Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again hurriedly
opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears of the horse
he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six paces of them,
the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was still the same
misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen," thought Rostov,
"that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as he would to any
other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's there.' There are
many stories of his getting to know an officer in just such a chance
way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave me a place near him?
Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him the truth, how I would
unmask his deceivers!" And in order to realize vividly his love
devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to himself an enemy or a
deceitful German, whom he would not only kill with pleasure but whom he
would slap in the face before the Emperor. Suddenly a distant shout
aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
2727
"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and watchword-
shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in reserve
tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front, this may be
my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now before I am
off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back I'll go to the
general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the saddle and touched
up his horse to ride once more round his hussars. It seemed to him that
it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a sloping descent lit up,
and facing it a black knoll that seemed as steep as a wall. On this
knoll there was a white patch that Rostov could not at all make out:
was it a glade in the wood lit up by the moon, or some unmelted snow,
or some white houses? He even thought something moved on that white
spot. "I expect it's snow... that spot... a spot- une tache," he
thought. "There now... it's not a tache... Natasha... sister, black
eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be surprised when I tell her how I've
seen the Emperor?) Natasha... take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the
right, your honor, there are bushes here," came the voice of an hussar,
past whom Rostov was riding in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted
his head that had sunk almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside
the hussar. He was succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish
drowsiness. "But what was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I
speak to the Emperor? No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes!
Natasha... sabretache... saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the
hussars with mustaches. Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with
mustaches... I thought about him too, just opposite Guryev's house...
Old Guryev.... Oh, but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all
nonsense. The chief thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at
me and wished to say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who
dared not. But that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the
important thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes,
yes! That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck.
All at once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?
What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the moment
he opened his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the enemy
was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and the
horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts. Over
there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went out
again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill fires
flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov could hear
the sound of French words but could not distinguish them. The din of
many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!" and "rrrr!"
2728
"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar beside
him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"
2729
The hussar did not reply.
2730
"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a
reply.
2731
"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.
2732
"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.
2733
"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's dark...
Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.
2734
Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army of
several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no longer
wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy army had a
stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!" he now heard
distinctly.
2735
"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to
the hussar beside him.
2736
The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The sound
of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars was
heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of
hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
2737
"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.
2738
Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode with
the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the line.
One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov with
their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,
reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
generals were saying.
2739
"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."
2740
"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still
there?"
2741
"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your excellency.
Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied Rostov.
2742
Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face in
the mist.
2743
"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.
2744
"Yes, sir."
2745
Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the direction
from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and pleased to be
riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and dangerous
misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration called to
him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov pretended not
to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on, continually mistaking
bushes for trees and gullies for men and continually discovering his
mistakes. Having descended the hill at a trot, he no longer saw either
our own or the enemy's fires, but heard the shouting of the French more
loudly and distinctly. In the valley he saw before him something like a
river, but when he reached it he found it was a road. Having come out
onto the road he reined in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along
it or cross it and ride over the black field up the hillside. To keep
to the road which gleamed white in the mist would have been safer
because it would be easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!"
said he, crossed the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop
toward the point where the French pickets had been standing that
evening.
2746
"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him. And
before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that had
suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a report,
and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive sound passed
out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in the pan.
Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more reports followed
at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the fog singing in
different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose spirits had risen,
like his own, at the firing, and went back at a footpace. "Well, some
more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in his soul. But no more
shots came.
2747
Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop again,
and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
2748
Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
only lit fires to deceive us.
2749
"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
retreat and leave the pickets."
2750
"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said Bagration.
"Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything tomorrow."
2751
"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was in
the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at the
salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his ride
and especially by the sound of the bullets.
2752
"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."
2753
"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"
2754
"What is it?"
2755
"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached to
the first squadron?"
2756
"What's your name?"
2757
"Count Rostov."
2758
"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."
2759
"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.
2760
But Rostov did not reply.
2761
"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"
2762
"I will give the order."
2763
"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the Emperor,"
thought Rostov.
2764
"Thank God!"
2765
The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the fact
that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops the
Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing him,
lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:
2766
Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position we
occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round me on
the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will myself
direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with your
habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's ranks, but
should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see your
Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for there
must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is at
stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the honor of
our nation.
2767
Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let every
man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these
hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This
victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter
quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France will
join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my people, of
you, and of myself.
2768
NAPOLEON
2769
CHAPTER XIV
2770
At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,
but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to plan,
were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into which they
were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes smart. It was cold
and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking tea and breakfasting,
the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a tattoo with their feet to
warm themselves, gathering round the fires throwing into the flames the
remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels, tubs, and everything that
they did not want or could not carry away with them. Austrian column
guides were moving in and out among the Russian troops and served as
heralds of the advance. As soon as an Austrian officer showed himself
near a commanding officer's quarters, the regiment began to move: the
soldiers ran from the fires, thrust their pipes into their boots, their
bags into the carts, got their muskets ready, and formed rank. The
officers buttoned up their coats, buckled on their swords and pouches,
and moved along the ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies
harnessed and packed the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants
and battalion and regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves,
gave final instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who
remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and unable,
from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog, to see
either the place they were leaving or that to which they were going.
2771
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his regiment as
much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has walked, whatever
strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches, just as a sailor is
always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and rigging of his ship, so
the soldier always has around him the same comrades, the same ranks,
the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the same company dog Jack, and
the same commanders. The sailor rarely cares to know the latitude in
which his ship is sailing, but on the day of battle- heaven knows how
and whence- a stern note of which all are conscious sounds in the moral
atmosphere of an army, announcing the approach of something decisive
and solemn, and awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day
of battle the soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of
their regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask
concerning what is going on around them.
2772
The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they could
not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and level
ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one might
encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns advanced
for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and ascending
hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and unknown
ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary, the
soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides, other
Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier felt
glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many more of
our men were going too.
2773
"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
ranks.
2774
"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A regular
Moscow!"
2775
Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or talked to
the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war, were out of
humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not exert themselves
to cheer the men but merely carried out the orders), yet the troops
marched gaily, as they always do when going into action, especially to
an attack. But when they had marched for about an hour in the dense
fog, the greater part of the men had to halt and an unpleasant
consciousness of some dislocation and blunder spread through the ranks.
How such a consciousness is communicated is very difficult to define,
but it certainly is communicated very surely, and flows rapidly,
imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as water does in a creek. Had the
Russian army been alone without any allies, it might perhaps have been
a long time before this consciousness of mismanagement became a general
conviction, but as it was, the disorder was readily and naturally
attributed to the stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a
dangerous muddle had been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
2776
"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?"
2777
"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."
2778
"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in the
middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
2779
"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
behind. And now here we stand hungry."
2780
"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking the
way," said an officer.
2781
"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!" said
another.
2782
"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.
2783
"The Eighteenth."
2784
"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you won't
get there till evening."
2785
"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are doing!"
said the officer and rode off.
2786
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
2787
"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them,
the scoundrels!"
2788
"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't got
halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.
2789
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
Germans.
2790
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
front of the infantry, who had to wait.
2791
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry should
be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher command, was
to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and dispirited.
After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending the hill. The
fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more densely below, where
they were descending. In front in the fog a shot was heard and then
another, at first irregularly at varying intervals- trata... tat- and
then more and more regularly and rapidly, and the action at the
Goldbach Stream began.
2792
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading
through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front
or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the
enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders
from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in those
unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this way
the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which had
gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov was,
stood on the Pratzen Heights.
2793
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog; on the
higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of what was
going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we supposed,
six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea of mist, no
one knew till after eight o'clock.
2794
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.
2795
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. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun
floating up out of the mist.
2796
When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and mist
were aglow with dazzling light- as if he had only awaited this to begin
the action- he drew the glove from his shapely white hand, made a sign
with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to begin. The marshals,
accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in different directions, and a
few minutes later the chief forces of the French army moved rapidly
toward those Pratzen Heights which were being more and more denuded by
Russian troops moving down the valley to their left.
2797
CHAPTER XV
2798
At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down into
the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and gave them
the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to lead that
column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen he halted.
Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number forming the
commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of suppressed excitement
and irritation, though controlledly calm as a man is at the approach of
a long-awaited moment. He was firmly convinced that this was the day of
his Toulon, or his bridge of Arcola. How it would come about he did not
know, but he felt sure it would do so. The locality and the position of
our troops were known to him as far as they could be known to anyone in
our army. His own strategic plan, which obviously could not now be
carried out, was forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince
Andrew considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such
as might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.
2799
To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen forces
could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight would
concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"
thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
me."
2800
He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with which
I shall lead the army."
2801
In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights was a
hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay like a
milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left into
which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of
firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the
vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that sea
of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there the enemy
probably was, for something could be descried. On the right the Guards
were entering the misty region with a sound of hoofs and wheels and now
and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left beyond the village similar
masses of cavalry came up and disappeared in the sea of mist. In front
and behind moved infantry. The commander in chief was standing at the
end of the village letting the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov
seemed worn and irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a
halt without any command being given, apparently obstructed by
something in front.
2802
"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you
understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile
through narrow village streets when we are marching against the enemy?"
2803
"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
answered the general.
2804
Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
2805
"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy! Very
fine!"
2806
"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
dispositions..."
2807
"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you that?...
Kindly do as you are ordered."
2808
"Yes, sir."
2809
"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man is
as surly as a dog."
2810
An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his hat
galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the fourth
column advanced into action.
2811
Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to fall
upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's
malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that what
was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not answering
the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.
2812
"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed the
village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."
2813
Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
2814
"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What are
they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still not
replying to the Austrian.
2815
Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
2816
Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped the
third division and convinced himself that there really were no
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of the
regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to throw
out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were other
troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six miles
away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a barren
descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the commander in
chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back.
Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting heavily in the
saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily with closed eyes.
The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the butts of their
muskets on the ground.
2817
"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
the left-flank columns had already descended.
2818
"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst of a
yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.
2819
Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of regiments
saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole extended
line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person they were
greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the regiment in front
of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he rode a little to one
side and looked round with a frown. Along the road from Pratzen
galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen in various uniforms.
Two of them rode side by side in front, at full gallop. One in a black
uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a bobtailed chestnut horse,
the other who was in a white uniform rode a black one. These were the
two Emperors followed by their suites. Kutuzov, affecting the manners
of an old soldier at the front, gave the command "Attention!" and rode
up to the Emperors with a salute. His whole appearance and manner were
suddenly transformed. He put on the air of a subordinate who obeys
without reasoning. With an affectation of respect which evidently
struck Alexander unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
2820
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy face
of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and vanished.
After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than on the field
of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time abroad, but
there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty and mildness
in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the same capacity for
varying expression and the same prevalent appearance of goodhearted
innocent youth.
2821
At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping
two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked
round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,
all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh, only
slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had stopped
behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced young man,
sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about him in a
leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his white
adjutants and asked some question- "Most likely he is asking at what
o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old
acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his
reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young
orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and Austrian.
Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay horses
covered with embroidered cloths.
2822
As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields enters
a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and confidence of
success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the galloping advent of
all these brilliant young men.
2823
"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same time
at the Emperor Francis.
2824
"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
respectfully.
2825
The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had not
quite heard.
2826
"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word
"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."
2827
The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
if complaining of Kutuzov.
2828
"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on the Empress'
Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are assembled,"
said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor Francis, as if
inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to what he was
saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about him and did not
listen.
2829
"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a resounding
voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not being heard, and
again something in his face twitched- "That is just why I do not begin,
sire, because we are not on parade and not on the Empress' Field." said
clearly and distinctly.
2830
In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.
2831
The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye waiting to
hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov, with respectfully
bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence lasted for about a
minute.
2832
"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting his
head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning, but
submissive general.
2833
He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander of
the column, gave him the order to advance.
2834
The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod and
one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
2835
As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners
front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing salute
reined in his horse before the Emperor.
2836
"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.
2837
"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,
sire,"41 he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles
among the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.
41
"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."
2838
Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a little
behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's presence,
passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a bold, brisk
pace.
2839
"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect of
battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades in
Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors, that he
forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first village
you've had to take," cried he.
2840
"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.
2841
The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot and
pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing, nor
of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that was
being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
2842
The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.
2843
CHAPTER XVI
2844
Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind the
carabineers.
2845
When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column he
stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been an
inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops were
marching along both.
2846
The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly visible
about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down below, on the
left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had stopped and was
speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who was a little behind
looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask him for a field glass.
2847
"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"
2848
The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass, trying
to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their faces
suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to be a
mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared just
in front of us.
2849
"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But how
is that?" said different voices.
2850
With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not more
than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a dense French
column coming up to meet the Apsherons.
2851
"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"
thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.
2852
"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at that
very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was heard quite
close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two steps from Prince
Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at this as if at a command,
everyone began to run.
2853
Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where five
minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would it
have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible not to
be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to lose touch
with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp what was
happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face, red and unlike
himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not ride away at once
he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov remained in the same
place and without answering drew out a handkerchief. Blood was flowing
from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced his way to him.
2854
"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling of his
lower jaw.
2855
"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing soldiers.
"Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably realizing
that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and rode to the
right.
2856
A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
2857
The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and fired
in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode. Having
by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of men, Kutuzov,
with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward a sound of
artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the crowd of
fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on the slope
of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was still firing and
Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some Russian infantry,
neither moving forward to protect the battery nor backward with the
fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself from the infantry
and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four remained. They
were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.
2858
"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to punish
him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment and
across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.
2859
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing at
him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his leg;
several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding the flag
let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on the
muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing without
orders.
2860
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of
the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"
2861
But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and run
to the standard.
2862
"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.
2863
"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and hearing
with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him. Several
soldiers fell.
2864
"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the
heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
battalion would follow him.
2865
And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!" and
overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag that
was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he was
immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw
our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having
abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French
infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning the
guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within twenty
paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above him
unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually groaned
and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at what was
going on in front of him- at the battery. He now saw clearly the figure
of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry, pulling one end of
a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other. He could distinctly
see the distraught yet angry expression on the faces of these two men,
who evidently did not realize what they were doing.
2866
"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them. "Why
doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why doesn't
the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the Frenchman
remembers his bayonet and stabs him...."
2867
And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to the
struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited
him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it
ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him
on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but
the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his
seeing what he had been looking at.
2868
"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of
the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner had
been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or saved.
But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky- the
lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds
gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all
as I ran," thought Prince Andrew- "not as we ran, shouting and
fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened
and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds
glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that
lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All
is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing,
nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but
quiet and peace. Thank God!..."
2869
CHAPTER XVII
2870
On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the battle
had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's demand to
commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility from himself,
Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to inquire of the
commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance between the two
flanks was more than six miles, even if the messenger were not killed
(which he very likely would be), and found the commander in chief
(which would be very difficult), he would not be able to get back
before evening.
2871
Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his suite,
and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and hope, was
the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
2872
"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in chief,
your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.
2873
"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov, hurriedly
interrupting Bagration.
2874
On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute, with
elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and generally in
that state of mind which makes everything seem possible, pleasant, and
easy.
2875
All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be a
general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he was
orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going with a
message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself. The morning
was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart was full of
joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his horse the rein
and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the line of
Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but were
standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by Uvarov's
cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation for battle;
having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the sound of cannon and
musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder and louder.
2876
In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket shots
at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two cannon shots,
but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the hill before
Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon that sometimes
several of them were not separated from one another but merged into a
general roar.
2877
He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one another
down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling, spreading, and
mingling with one another. He could also, by the gleam of bayonets
visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of infantry and
narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.
2878
Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men of
some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of troops;
but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make out.
These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating effect on
him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and determination.
2879
"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther and
farther into the region where the army was already in action.
2880
"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
Rostov.
2881
After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part of the
line (the Guards) was already in action.
2882
"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.
2883
He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks
were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
2884
"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at the
same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of the
horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their hoofs and
the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their figures, and
even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our Horse Guards,
advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming to meet them.
2885
The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their horses.
Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command: "Charge!"
shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to full speed.
Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack on the French,
galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, but still was
not in time to avoid them.
2886
The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned angrily
on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably collide.
This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his Bedouin over
(Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to these gigantic men
and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to flourish his whip before
the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The heavy black horse, sixteen hands
high, shied, throwing back its ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove
his huge spurs in violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and
extending its neck, galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards
passed Rostov before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back
saw that their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry
with red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
enveloped everything.
2887
At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him, disappeared in
the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or to go where
he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of the Horse Guards that
amazed the French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that
of all that mass of huge and handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich
youths, officers and cadets, who had galloped past him on their
thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were left after the charge.
2888
"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall see
the Emperor immediately! " thought Rostov and galloped on.
2889
When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them and
around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so much
because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on the
soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.
2890
Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he heard a
voice calling him by name.
2891
"Rostov!"
2892
"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.
2893
"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said
Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have been
under fire for the first time.
2894
Rostov stopped.
2895
"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"
2896
"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing talkative.
"Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the Guards, having
taken up their position and seeing troops before them, thought they
were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the cannon balls
discharged by those troops that they were themselves in the front line
and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov without hearing Boris to
the end spurred his horse.
2897
"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.
2898
"With a message to His Majesty."
2899
"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His Highness," and
pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high shoulders and frowning
brows stood a hundred paces away from them in his helmet and Horse
Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale, white uniformed Austrian
officer.
2900
"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.
2901
"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager as
Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at the
front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the von
Bergs- have been knights!"
2902
He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and rode
away.
2903
Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to avoid
again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the Horse
Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round the
place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard. Suddenly
he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind our troops,
where he could never have expected the enemy to be.
2904
"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he
reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish with
the rest."
2905
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more and
more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the village
of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.
2906
"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
2907
"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was
told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.
2908
"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.
2909
"May the devil take them- the traitors!"
2910
"Zum Henker diese Russen!"42 muttered a German.
42
"Hang these Russians!"
2911
Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse, screams,
and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing died down.
Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had been firing
at one another.
2912
"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it can't
be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"
2913
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head. Though he
saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights just where
he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief, he could not,
did not wish to, believe that.
2914
CHAPTER XVIII
2915
Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
2916
"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking everyone
he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
2917
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
2918
"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier, laughing
for some reason and shaking himself free.
2919
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.
2920
"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."
2921
"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat in
the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black horses
fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the Imperial
horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone except the
Tsar!"
2922
Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a wounded
officer passing by addressed him:
2923
"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was killed
by a cannon ball- struck in the breast before our regiment."
2924
"Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected him.
2925
"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.
2926
"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind... there are not
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders are
there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek, and he
walked on.
2927
Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible to
doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in which
he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now to say
to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and unwounded?
2928
"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"
2929
"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to go?
That way is nearer."
2930
Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.
2931
"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to save
myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the greatest number
of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The French had not yet
occupied that region, and the Russians- the uninjured and slightly
wounded- had left it long ago. All about the field, like heaps of
manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to fifteen dead and wounded
to each couple of acres. The wounded crept together in twos and threes
and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes
feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He put his horse to a trot to avoid
seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid- afraid not for his
life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand
the sight of these unfortunates.
2932
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant
riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots. The
sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around
him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of terror and pity
for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter. "What would she
feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this field with the
cannon aimed at me?"
2933
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry fire
sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the battle
was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the Emperor or
Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was wounded was
correct, others that it was not, and explained the false rumor that had
spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had really galloped from
the field of battle with the pale and terrified Ober-Hofmarschal Count
Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the battlefield with others in the
Emperor's suite. One officer told Rostov that he had seen someone from
headquarters behind the village to the left, and thither Rostov rode,
not hoping to find anyone but merely to ease his conscience. When he
had ridden about two miles and had passed the last of the Russian
troops, he saw, near a kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on
horseback facing the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed
familiar to Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which
Rostov fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his
horse with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only
a little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and deferentially
addressed the horseman with the white plumes, evidently suggesting that
he should do the same. The rider, whose figure seemed familiar to
Rostov and involuntarily riveted his attention, made a gesture of
refusal with his head and hand and by that gesture Rostov instantly
recognized his lamented and adored monarch.
2934
"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!" thought
Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov saw the
beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory. The
Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the charm,
the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was happy in
the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded were
false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and even
ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had ordered
him to deliver.
2935
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter the
thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help or a
chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and he is
alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he had longed
for more than anything else in the world, did not know how to approach
the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him why it would be
inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
2936
"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of his
being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant or
painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to him
now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere sight of
him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the Emperor that
he had composed in his imagination could he now recall. Those speeches
were intended for quite other conditions, they were for the most part
to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph, generally when he was
dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked him for heroic deeds, and
while dying he expressed the love his actions had proved.
2937
"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the right
flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost? No,
certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and with
a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at the
Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
2938
While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.
2939
"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
2940
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness was
the cause his grief.
2941
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the sovereign.
It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the Emperor and he had
not made use of it.... "What have I done?" thought he. And he turned
round and galloped back to the place where he had seen the Emperor, but
there was no one beyond the ditch now. Only some carts and carriages
were passing by. From one of the drivers he learned that Kutuzov's
staff were not far off, in the village the vehicles were going to.
Rostov followed them. In front of him walked Kutuzov's groom leading
horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and behind that walked an old,
bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked cap and sheepskin coat.
2942
"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.
2943
"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.
2944
"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"
2945
"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed in
silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
2946
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points. More
than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
2947
Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other columns
after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly confused
masses.
2948
The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were crowding
around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of Augesd.
2949
After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot cannonade
(delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from numerous
batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights, directed at our
retreating forces.
2950
In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept up
a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops. It
was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many years the
old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap peacefully
angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled up, handled the
floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on that dam over which
for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and blue jackets had
peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with wheat and had
returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that narrow dam
amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and between the
wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now crowded together,
crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying and killing one
another, only to move on a few steps and be killed themselves in the
same way.
2951
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around, or a
shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.
2952
Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot, with the
regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by the
crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and, jammed in
on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had fallen under a
cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon ball killed someone
behind them, another fell in front and splashed Dolokhov with blood.
The crowd, pushing forward desperately, squeezed together, moved a few
steps, and again stopped.
2953
"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.
2954
Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the edge
of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto the
slippery ice that covered the millpool.
2955
"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked under
him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It bears!..."
2956
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon even
under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to the bank,
hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at the
entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to address
Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd that
everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general fell
from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or thought of
raising him.
2957
"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go on!"
innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.
2958
One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto
the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen
pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg
slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to his
waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped his
horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why do you
stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the crowd. The
soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the horses to make them
turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank. The ice, that had held
under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass, and some forty men who
were on it dashed, some forward and some back, drowning one another.
2959
Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop onto the
ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd that covered
the dam, the pond, and the bank.
2960
CHAPTER XIX
2961
On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his
hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and unconsciously
uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
2962
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did not
know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt that
he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.
2963
"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
till now. But where am I?"
2964
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same lofty
sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher, and
between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and did
not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had ridden
up and stopped near him.
2965
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding over
the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the batteries
firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and wounded left
on the field.
2966
"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian grenadier,
who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened nape, lay on
his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
2967
"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your Majesty,"
said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were firing at
Augesd.
2968
"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone on
a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back with
the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had already
been taken by the French as a trophy.)
2969
"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.
2970
Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not only
did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at once
forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to death,
and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He knew it
was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment Napoleon seemed to him such
a small, insignificant creature compared with what was passing now
between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the clouds flying over
it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who might be standing over
him, or what was said of him; he was only glad that people were
standing near him and only wished that they would help him and bring
him back to life, which seemed to him so beautiful now that he had
today learned to understand it so differently. He collected all his
strength, to stir and utter a sound. He feebly moved his leg and
uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused his own pity.
2971
"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and carry him
to the dressing station."
2972
Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who, hat in
hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the
victory.
2973
Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from the
terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting while
being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing station. He
did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when with other
wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the hospital.
During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was able to look
about him and even speak.
2974
The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a French
convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the Emperor will
pass here immediately; it will please him to see these gentlemen
prisoners."
2975
"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army, that
he is probably tired of them," said another officer.
2976
"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian officer
in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.
2977
Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
the Horse Guards.
2978
Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
2979
"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
2980
They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
2981
"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of Horse
Guards?" asked Napoleon.
2982
"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.
2983
"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.
2984
"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward," said
Repnin.
2985
"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young man
beside you?"
2986
Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
2987
After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
2988
"He's very young to come to meddle with us."
2989
"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a failing
voice.
2990
"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"
2991
Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the Emperor's
eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to attract his
attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on the battlefield
and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young man" that was
connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
2992
"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"
2993
Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that moment
seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so mean did
his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory appear,
compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he had seen and
understood, that he could not answer him.
2994
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
alive could understand or explain.
2995
The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to one
of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to and taken
to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their wounds. Au revoir,
Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and galloped away.
2996
His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
2997
The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck, but
seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now hastened to
return the holy image.
2998
Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his chest
outside his uniform.
2999
"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon his
sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence, "it
would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to
Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this life,
and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm I
should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to whom
should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable, incomprehensible,
which I not only cannot address but which I cannot even express in
words- the Great All or Nothing-" said he to himself, "or to that God
who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary! There is nothing certain,
nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand, and
the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important.
3000
The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable pain;
his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his
father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt
the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little
Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief subjects
of his delirious fancies.
3001
The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little
Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and torments
had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward morning all
these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness of
unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's doctor,
Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in convalescence.
3002
"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not
recover."
3003
And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care of
the inhabitants of the district.
3004
BOOK FOUR: 1806
3005
CHAPTER I
3006
Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave. Denisov
was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to travel with him
as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a comrade at the
last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had drunk three
bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts across the
snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to Moscow, but lay
at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew more and more
impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
3007
"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.
3008
"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with his
whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed of the
sleigh.
3009
Denisov gave no answer.
3010
"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has
his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And
here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you
hurry up? Now then!"
3011
"Which house is it?" asked the driver.
3012
"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's
our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!
We're almost there!"
3013
Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
3014
"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are in our
house, aren't they?"
3015
"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."
3016
"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now, don't
forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his new
mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake up,
Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again nodding.
"Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get on!" Rostov
shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his door. It seemed
to him the horses were not moving at all. At last the sleigh bore to
the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw overhead the old
familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off, the porch, and the
post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out before the sleigh
stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold and silent, as if
quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no one in the hall.
"Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping for a moment with
a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to run along the hall
and up the warped steps of the familiar staircase. The well-known old
door handle, which always angered the countess when it was not properly
cleaned, turned as loosely as ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in
the anteroom.
3017
Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was so
strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the opening
door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly changed to one
of delighted amazement.
3018
"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young
master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order to
announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss the
young man's shoulder.
3019
"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.
3020
"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have a
look at you, your excellency."
3021
"Is everything quite all right?"
3022
"The Lord be thanked, yes!"
3023
Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone to
forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the drawing
room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and began
hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the same
kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more kissing,
more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish which was
Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted, talked, and
kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not there, he noticed
that.
3024
"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."
3025
"Here he is... our own... Kolya,43 dear fellow... How he has
changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."
43
Nicholas.
3026
"And me, kiss me!"
3027
"Dearest... and me!"
3028
Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count were
all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the room,
exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.
3029
Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"
3030
Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his face
with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang away
and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked
piercingly.
3031
All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all
around were lips seeking a kiss.
3032
Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not
taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave
her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for someone.
The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard at the
door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.
3033
Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made since
he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her. When they
met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her face, but
only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket. Denisov,
who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there and wiped
his eyes at the sight.
3034
"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to
the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
3035
"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing and
embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here is
Denisov!"
3036
The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of Denisov.
3037
"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.
3038
Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs all
gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.
3039
The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully adoring
eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places nearest
to him and disputed with one another who should bring him his tea,
handkerchief, and pipe.
3040
Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first moment
of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.
3041
Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers slept
till ten o'clock.
3042
In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The servants
were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving, and their
well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell of
tobacco.
3043
"Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice. "Wostov,
get up!"
3044
Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
disheveled head from the hot pillow.
3045
"Why, is it late?"
3046
"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A rustle of
starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of girls' voices
came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a crack and there was
a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black hair, and merry faces.
It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had come to see whether they were
getting up.
3047
"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.
3048
"Directly!"
3049
Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer room,
with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder brother,
and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see men
undressed, opened the bedroom door.
3050
"Is this your saber?" he shouted.
3051
The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the blanket,
looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door, having
let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from behind it.
3052
"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.
3053
"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,
addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.
3054
Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing gown,
and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just getting
her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was twirling round and
was about to expand her dresses into a balloon and sit down. They were
dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and were both fresh, rosy, and
bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking her brother's arm, led him
into the sitting room, where they began talking. They hardly gave one
another time to ask questions and give replies concerning a thousand
little matters which could not interest anyone but themselves. Natasha
laughed at every word he said or that she said herself, not because
what they were saying was amusing, but because she felt happy and was
unable to control her joy which expressed itself by laughter.
3055
"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.
3056
Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he left
home now for the first time after eighteen months again brightened his
soul and his face.
3057
"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you? I'm
awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want to
know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"
3058
"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.
3059
"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to her-
thou or you?"
3060
"As may happen," said Rostov.
3061
"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other time.
No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend. Such a
friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"
3062
She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her long,
slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is
covered even by a ball dress.
3063
"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in the
fire and pressed it there!"
3064
Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what used
to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly bright
eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood which had no
meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best joys of his
life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of love did not
seem to him senseless, he understood and was not surprised at it.
3065
"Well, and is that all?" he asked.
3066
"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does it
for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."
3067
"Well, what then?"
3068
"Well, she loves me and you like that."
3069
Natasha suddenly flushed.
3070
"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are to
forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him be
free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?" asked
Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that what she
was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
3071
Rostov became thoughtful.
3072
"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so charming
that only a fool would renounce such happiness."
3073
"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over. We
knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say that-
if you consider yourself bound by your promise- it will seem as if she
had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were marrying her
because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."
3074
Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had already
struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when he had
caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She was a
charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with him (he
did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her now, and
even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so many other
pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a wise
decision," he thought, "I must remain free."
3075
"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later on.
Oh, how glad I am to have you!
3076
"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.
3077
"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about him
or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."
3078
"Dear me! Then what are you up now?"
3079
"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have you
seen Duport?"
3080
"No."
3081
"Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you won't understand.
That's what I'm up to."
3082
Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran back a
few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
3083
"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself on
her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry
anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."
3084
Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom, felt
envious and Natasha could not help joining in.
3085
"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.
3086
"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"
3087
Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell him so
when I see him!"
3088
"Dear me!" said Rostov.
3089
"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov nice?"
she asked.
3090
"Yes, indeed!"
3091
"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible, Denisov?"
3092
"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."
3093
"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"
3094
"Very."
3095
"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."
3096
And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could not
be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters, was
looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave with
her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-
Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender kisses.
Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by Natasha's
intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked him for
his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom and told
her that one way or another he would never cease to love her, for that
would be impossible.
3097
"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were
silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
like strangers."
3098
Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like most
of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not only
Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who- dreading
this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a brilliant
match- blushed like a girl.
3099
Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.
3100
CHAPTER II
3101
On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was welcomed by
his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their darling
Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and polite young
man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good
dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
3102
The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself to
the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be at
home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money from
Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly- he now
recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind. Now
he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected racing
men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a lady on one
of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led the mazurka at
the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field Marshal Kamenski,
visited the English Club, and was on intimate terms with a colonel of
forty to whom Denisov had introduced
3103
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But still,
as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him, he often
spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be understood
that he had not told all and that there was something in his feelings
for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with his whole soul
he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the Emperor, who was
spoken of as the "angel incarnate."
3104
During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army, he did
not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She was
very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him, but he
was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do that there is
no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears to bind himself
and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many other things. When he
thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, "Ah,
there will be, and there are, many more such girls somewhere whom I do
not yet know. There will be time enough to think about love when I want
to, but now I have no time." Besides, it seemed to him that the society
of women was rather derogatory to his manhood. He went to balls and
into ladies' society with an affectation of doing so against his will.
The races, the English Club, sprees with Denisov, and visits to a
certain house- that was another matter and quite the thing for a
dashing young hussar!
3105
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy
arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.
3106
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish
for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the fete.
The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders with
pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they
so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing
several thousand rubles.
3107
"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"
3108
"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.
3109
The count considered.
3110
"We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said
he, bending down a finger.
3111
"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.
3112
"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum who
appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to set
the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must be
brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred pots here
on Friday."
3113
Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his "little
countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of importance,
he returned again, called back the cook and the club steward, and again
began giving orders. A light footstep and the clinking of spurs were
heard at the door, and the young count, handsome, rosy, with a dark
little mustache, evidently rested and made sleeker by his easy life in
Moscow, entered the room.
3114
"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile, as
if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would only
help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own orchestra, but
shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You military men like that
sort of thing."
3115
"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less before
the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with a
smile.
3116
The old count pretended to be angry.
3117
"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"
3118
And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and respectful
expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the father and
son.
3119
"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said he.
"Laughing at us old fellows!"
3120
"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!
3121
"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his son
by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and pair
at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has sent you to
ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get them from
anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in and ask
the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the coachman
Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who danced at
Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and bring him
along to me."
3122
"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked Nicholas,
laughing. "Dear, dear!..."
3123
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the businesslike,
preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never left her face, Anna
Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon the count in his
dressing gown every day, he invariably became confused and begged her
to excuse his costume.
3124
"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her eyes.
"But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now we shall
get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in any case.
He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is now on the
staff."
3125
The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself one
of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
3126
"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with him?"
he asked.
3127
Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted
on her face.
3128
"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what we
hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to give
him what consolation I can."
3129
"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.
3130
Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.
3131
"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper, "has
compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited him
to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and that
daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show her
sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half smile
betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called Dolokhov.
"They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."
3132
"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it will all blow
over. It will be a tremendous banquet."
3133
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred and
fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting the
guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince Bagration, to
dinner.
3134
On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow
had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to
victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not
believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so
strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were
distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the news
began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and the
last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The men who
set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri Dolgorukov,
Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski- did not show themselves at
the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles, and the
Moscovites who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov among them-
remained for a while without any definite opinion on the subject of the
war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that something was wrong
and that to discuss the bad news was difficult, and so it was best to
be silent. But after a while, just as a jury comes out of its room, the
bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion reappeared, and everybody began
speaking clearly and definitely. Reasons were found for the incredible,
unheard-of, and impossible event of a Russian defeat, everything became
clear, and in all corners of Moscow the same things began to be said.
These reasons were the treachery of the Austrians, a defective
commissariat, the treachery of the Pole Przebyszewski and of the
Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's incapacity, and (it was whispered) the
youth and inexperience of the sovereign, who had trusted worthless and
insignificant people. But the army, the Russian army, everyone
declared, was extraordinary and had achieved miracles of valor.The
soldiers, officers, and generals were heroes. But the hero of heroes
was Prince Bagration, distinguished by his Schon Grabern affair and by
the retreat from Austerlitz, where he alone had withdrawn his column
unbroken and had all day beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous
as his own. What also conduced to Bagration's being selected as
Moscow's hero was the fact that he had no connections in the city and
was a stranger there. In his person, honor was shown to a simple
fighting Russian soldier without connections and intrigues, and to one
who was associated by memories of the Italian campaign with the name of
Suvorov. Moreover, paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of
expressing disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.
3135
"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire. Kutuzov
no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers, calling him a
court weathercock and an old satyr.
3136
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on modeling
and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting consolation
for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and the words of
Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to battle by
highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to show them that
it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but that Russian
soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all sides, new
and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of heroism shown
by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a standard,
another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five cannon
singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know him, as
having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the left,
and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those who
knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a
pregnant wife with his eccentric father.
3137
CHAPTER III
3138
On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were filled
with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in
springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and
thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in
evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in
Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and
smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors' every
movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present were
elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat fingers,
and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and members sat
in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual groups. A
minority of those present were casual guests- chiefly young men, among
whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was now again an officer
in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young people, especially
those who were militarymen, bore that expression of condescending
respect for their elders which seems to say to the older generation,
"We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the same remember
that the future belongs to us."
3139
Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles, went
about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull. Here, as
elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience to his
wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people, he
treated them with absent-minded contempt.
3140
By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his
wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored
guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most
important old men were the center of groups which even strangers
approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The
largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and Naryshkin.
Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been overwhelmed by
flying Austrians and had had to force their way through them with
bayonets.
3141
Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
3142
In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply to
the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing close
by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently failed to
learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of crowing like a
cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the wit, making him
feel that in that place and on that day, it was improper to speak so of
Kutuzov.
3143
Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov
stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made
and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed Dolokhov's
hand.
3144
"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been together out
there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili Ignatovich... How d'ye do,
old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man who was passing, but before
he had finished his greeting there was a general stir, and a footman
who had run in announced, with a frightened face: "He's arrived!"
3145
Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye shaken together
in a shovel- the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms
came together and crowded in the large drawing room by the door of the
ballroom.
3146
Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or sword,
which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the hall
porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded whip
over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of the battle
of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian and foreign
Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast. Evidently just
before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and whiskers trimmed,
which changed his appearance for the worse. There was something naively
festive in his air, which, in conjunction with his firm and virile
features, gave him a rather comical expression. Bekleshev and Theodore
Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the doorway to allow him,
as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration was embarrassed, not
wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and this caused some delay
at the doors, but after all he did at last enter first. He walked shyly
and awkwardly over the parquet floor of the reception room, not knowing
what to do with his hands; he was more accustomed to walk over a plowed
field under fire, as he had done at the head of the Kursk regiment at
Schon Grabern- and he would have found that easier. The committeemen
met him at the first door and, expressing their delight at seeing such
a highly honored guest, took possession of him as it were, without
waiting for his reply, surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room.
It was at first impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd
of members and guests jostling one another and trying to get a good
look at Bagration over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare
animal. Count Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way,
dear boy! Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more
energetically than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and
seated them on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members
of the Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his
way through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some verses
composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on seeing the
salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help. But all eyes
demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in their power, he
resolutely took the salver with both hands and looked sternly and
reproachfully at the count who had presented it to him. Someone
obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he would, it seemed, have
held it till evening and have gone in to dinner with it) and drew his
attention to the verses.
3147
"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing
his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:
3148
Bring glory then to Alexander's reign
3149
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo announced
that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the dining room came
the resounding strains of the polonaise:
3150
Conquest's joyful thunder waken,
3151
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was
more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the
rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant
allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took their
seats in the dining room, according to their rank and importance: the
more important nearer to the honored guest, as naturally as water flows
deepest where the land lies lowest.
3152
Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to Bagration,
who recognized him and said a few words to him, disjointed and awkward,
as were all the words he spoke that day, and Count Ilya looked joyfully
and proudly around while Bagration spoke to his son.
3153
Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov, sat
almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre, beside
Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of the
committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of
Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.
3154
His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and the
other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till the
end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions to the
footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety. Everything
was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet (at sight of
which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious pleasure), the footmen
began popping corks and filling the champagne glasses. After the fish,
which made a certain sensation, the count exchanged glances with the
other committeemen. "There will be many toasts, it's time to begin," he
whispered, and taking up his glass, he rose. All were silent, waiting
for what he would say.
3155
"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at the
same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and
enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful thunder
waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and shouted
"Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it on the
field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could be heard
above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the health of our
Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and emptying his glass at
one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many followed his example, and the
loud shouting continued for a long time. When the voices subsided, the
footmen cleared away the broken glass and everybody sat down again,
smiling at the noise they had made and exchanging remarks. The old
count rose once more, glanced at a note lying beside his plate, and
proposed a toast, "To the health of the hero of our last campaign,
Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and again his blue eyes grew moist.
"Hurrah!" cried the three hundred voices again, but instead of the band
a choir began singing a cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:
3156
Russians! O'er all barriers on!
3157
As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was proposed
and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more glass was
smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to Bekleshev,
Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the committee, to
all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and finally to Count
Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the banquet. At that toast,
the count took out his handkerchief and, covering his face, wept
outright.
3158
CHAPTER IV
3159
Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate and
drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed that
some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all through
dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed eyes and
a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge of his
nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and hear
nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by some
depressing and unsolved problem.
3160
The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by
the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy
with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that morning,
which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters said that he
saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's connection with
Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre absolutely
disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he feared now
to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every time he
chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with
Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his
wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully recovered
his former position after the campaign, had returned to Petersburg and
come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations with Pierre as
a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his house, and Pierre
had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled how Helene had
smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at their house,
and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's beauty to him and
from that time till they came to Moscow had not left them for a day.
3161
"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It would
be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule me,
just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended him, and
helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add to the
pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it were true,
but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't, believe it." He
remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in his moments of
cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and dropping them into
the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel without any reason, or
shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That expression was often on
Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes, he is a bully," thought
Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him. It must seem to him that
everyone is afraid of him, and that must please him. He must think that
I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I am afraid of him," he thought,
and again he felt something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul.
Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were now sitting opposite Pierre and
seemed very gay. Rostov was talking merrily to his two friends, one of
whom was a dashing hussar and the other a notorious duelist and rake,
and every now and then he glanced ironically at Pierre, whose
preoccupied, absent-minded, and massive figure was a very noticeable
one at the dinner. Rostov looked inimically at Pierre, first because
Pierre appeared to his hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a
beauty, and in a word- an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his
preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had
not responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.
3162
"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy of
exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's health?"
3163
Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting till
all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.
3164
"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"
3165
"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.
3166
"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.
3167
"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.
3168
Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were talking
about him. He reddened and turned away.
3169
"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with a
serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.
3170
"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and their lovers!" he
added.
3171
Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking at
Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing leaflets
with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of the principal
guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov, leaning across,
snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre looked at
Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and monstrous
that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took possession of him.
He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
3172
"How dare you take it?" he shouted.
3173
Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski and the
neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.
3174
"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened voices.
3175
Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"
3176
"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.
3177
Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
3178
"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,
pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
3179
At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him the
whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative. He
hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's request
that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to be
Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for
the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home, but
Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till late,
listening to the gypsies and other singers.
3180
"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,"said Dolokhov, as he took leave
of Rostov in the Club porch.
3181
"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.
3182
Dolokhov paused.
3183
"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two words.
If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma used to tell
me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see one your fear's
all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!' And that's
how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."44
44
Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
3184
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already there.
Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which had
no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow. He
had evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and
screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed
by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of which after his sleepless
night he had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of
Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was
nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the same thing in his
place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I should have done the
same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or he
will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can't I go away from here,
run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed through his mind. But just at
moments when such thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a
particularly calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of
the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are things ready?"
3185
When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.
3186
"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment
I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient
ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were
not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."
3187
"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.
3188
"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent
will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others concerned in the
affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that
the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know, Count, it is much
more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let matters become
irreparable. There was no insult on either side. Allow me to
convey...."
3189
"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the same....
Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and where to
shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
3190
He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of
the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand- a fact
that he did not to confess.
3191
"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.
3192
"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on his
side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to the
appointed place.
3193
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road, where
the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during
the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the
farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left
tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been
standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck
intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and
misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three
minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.
3194
CHAPTER V
3195
"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.
3196
"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling of
dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
men's will.
3197
Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols, and
at the word thwee begin to advance.
3198
"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
3199
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had
the right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier.
Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently
with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist's face. His
mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
3200
"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three," he
went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into the
deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it and
knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed off the
track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then quickly
glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been shown,
fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered at the
sound and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The smoke,
rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything for an
instant, but there was no second report as he had expected. He only
heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his figure came in view through the
smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while the other
clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostov ran toward him
and said something.
3201
"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not over." And
after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the saber, he sank
on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped it on his
coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was pallid and
quivered.
3202
"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.
3203
"Please," he uttered with an effort.
3204
Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov and
was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov cried:
3205
"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by his
saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to the
snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself, drew
in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked and
sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes,
still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered
his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
3206
"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.
3207
"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.
3208
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
Dolokhov's angry cry.
3209
"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on
the snow.
3210
Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
3211
"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.
3212
Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.
3213
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
3214
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostov, who
was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was struck by the totally
altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dolokhov's
face.
3215
"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.
3216
"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping
voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have
killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."
3217
"Who?" asked Rostov.
3218
"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and Dolokhov
pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.
3219
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that he was
living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive
it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.
3220
Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most
affectionate of sons and brothers.
3221
CHAPTER VI
3222
Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and
in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the
duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.
3223
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that had
happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dolokhov's handsome,
insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
he reeled and sank on the snow.
3224
"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover, yes,
killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come to do
it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice.
3225
"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without loving
her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled that
moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words he
had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from that!
Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not so, that
I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."
3226
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at
his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful
understanding of his employer's happiness.
3227
"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic beauty
and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which she
received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and beauty. So
this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did not understand
her. How often when considering her character I have told myself that I
was to blame for not understanding her, for not understanding that
constant composure and complacency and lack of all interests or
desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible truth that she is a
depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible word to myself all has
become clear.
3228
"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss her
naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself be
kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she replied
with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous: 'Let him
do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked her if she
felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed contemptuously and said she
was not a fool to want to have children, and that she was not going to
have any children by me."
3229
Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and the
vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though she had
been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
3230
"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
promener,"45 she used to say. Often seeing the success she had
with young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did
not love her.
45
"You clear out of this."
3231
"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a
depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And
now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"
3232
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of what
is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their troubles. He
digested his sufferings alone.
3233
"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that? Why
did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'46 to
her, which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must
endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's
nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's all apart
from myself.
46
I love you.
3234
"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and a
criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view they
were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a martyr's
death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a despot.
Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive- live:
tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is it worth
tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in comparison
with eternity?"
3235
But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such reflections,
she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments when he had
most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he felt the
blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move about and
break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell her that 'Je
vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he had said it for
the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable alloit-il faire dans
cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to laugh at himself.
3236
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
intention to part from her forever.
3237
Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee, Pierre
was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
3238
He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled expression,
unable to realize where he was.
3239
"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at home,"
said the valet.
3240
But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the countess
herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with silver and with
simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round her lovely head
like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic, except that there
was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent marble brow. With her
imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in front of the valet.
She knew of the duel and had come to speak about it. She waited till
the valet had set down the coffee things and left the room. Pierre
looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and like a hare surrounded
by hounds who lays back her ears and continues to crouch motionless
before her enemies, he tried to continue reading. But feeling this to
be senseless and impossible, he again glanced timidly at her. She did
not sit down but looked at him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for
the valet to go.
3241
"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should like to
know?" she asked sternly.
3242
"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.
3243
"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel about?
What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."
3244
Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth, but
could not reply.
3245
"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that
Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness of
speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and you
believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove?
That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew that. What
will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of all Moscow,
that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing what you were
about, challenged a man you are jealous of without cause." Helene
raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A man who's a
better man than you in every way..."
3246
"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her, and not
moving a muscle.
3247
"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like his
company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should prefer
yours."
3248
"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.
3249
"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you plainly
that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who would not
have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so," said she.
3250
Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose strange
expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He was suffering
physically at that moment, there was a weight on his chest and he could
not breathe. He knew that he must do something to put an end to this
suffering, but what he wanted to do was too terrible.
3251
"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.
3252
"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said Helene.
"Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"
3253
Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
3254
"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table with
a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
brandishing the slab.
3255
Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a terrible
voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows what he
would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the room.
3256
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his estates
in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property, and left
for Petersburg alone.
3257
CHAPTER VII
3258
Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz and
the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite of the
letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his body
had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What was worst
of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a
possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the
people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or
dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The
gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at
Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after
brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made
their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this
official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the
gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from Kutuzov
informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
3259
"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his hand
and at the head of a regiment- he fell as a hero, worthy of his father
and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the whole army
it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort myself and
you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise he would have
been mentioned among the officers found on the field of battle, a list
of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."
3260
After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone in his
study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next morning, but he
was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the architect, and
though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.
3261
When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at his
lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.
3262
"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice, throwing
down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own impetus,
and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that wheel, which
merged in her memory with what followed.)
3263
She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.
Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad, not
crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging over
her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the worst in
life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
incomprehensible- the death of one she loved.
3264
"Father! Andrew!"- said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such an
indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her father
could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
3265
"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed! Kutuzov
writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to drive the
princess away by that scream... "Killed!"
3266
The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but on
hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in her
beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy- a supreme joy apart from the
joys and sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief within her.
She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took his hand, and
drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy neck.
3267
"Father" she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."
3268
"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face away
from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why? Go, go and
tell Lise."
3269
The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father and
wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he took
leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw him tender
and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did he believe?
Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There in the realms
of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.
3270
"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.
3271
"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and Russia's
glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell Lise. I
will follow."
3272
When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy calm
peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did not see
Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at something
joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
3273
"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying back,
"give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and held it
below her waist.
3274
Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
lifted in childlike happiness.
3275
Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of
her sister-in-law's dress.
3276
"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with bright
and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
3277
Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
3278
"What is the matter, Mary?"
3279
"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping away
her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.
3280
Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began trying
to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry. Unobservant
as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of which she did not
understand, agitated her. She said nothing but looked about uneasily as
if in search of something. Before dinner the old prince, of whom she
was always afraid, came into her room with a peculiarly restless and
malign expression and went out again without saying a word. She looked
at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a while with that expression of
attention to something within her that is only seen in pregnant women,
and suddenly began to cry.
3281
"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.
3282
"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
feel afraid."
3283
"So there's nothing?"
3284
"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant eyes
at her sister-in-law.
3285
She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the
terrible news from her till after her confinement, which was expected
within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince each bore and hid
their grief in their own way. The old prince would not cherish any
hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had been killed, and
though he sent an official to Austria to seek for traces of his son, he
ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended to erect in his own
garden to his memory, and he told everybody that his son had been
killed. He tried not to change his former way of life, but his strength
failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker
every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for her brother as living
and was always awaiting news of his return.
3286
CHAPTER VIII
3287
"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning of
the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit, but
as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word, and
even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had come, so
now the smile of the little princess- influenced by the general mood
though without knowing its cause- was such as to remind one still more
of the general sorrow.
3288
"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique47 as Foka the
cook calls it- has disagreed with me."
47
Fruhstuck: breakfast.
3289
"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are
very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
3290
"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said one of
the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife from the
neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last fortnight.)
3291
"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go. Courage,
my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
3292
"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on the
little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of inevitable
pain showed itself.
3293
"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so, Mary!
Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a
suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
Bogdanovna.
3294
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.
3295
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,
plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
3296
"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary looking
at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
3297
"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything about
it."
3298
"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they
had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
any moment.)
3299
"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna. "We'll
manage very well without a doctor."
3300
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On
their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
3301
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and watching
what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with quiet steps
in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and turned away. She
did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the door again, now
sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her prayer book, now
kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and distress she found
that her prayers did not calm her excitement. Suddenly her door opened
softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to
that room as the old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold
with a shawl round her head.
3302
"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and here
I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his saint, my
angel," she said with a sigh.
3303
"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"
3304
"God is merciful, birdie."
3305
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by the
door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began reading.
Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one another,
the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging. Everyone in
the house was dominated by the same feeling that Princess Mary
experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the superstition that
the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman in travail
suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one spoke of it, but
apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good manners habitual in
the prince's household, a common anxiety, a softening of the heart, and
a consciousness that something great and mysterious was being
accomplished at that moment made itself felt.
3306
There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only that 'the prince
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."
3307
"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna, giving
the messenger a significant look.
3308
Tikhon went and told the prince.
3309
"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon
did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
3310
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and, seeing
the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his perturbed
face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed him on the
shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles or saying why
he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world continued its
course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of suspense and
softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable did not lessen
but increased. No one slept.
3311
It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume
its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A
relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German doctor
from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback with
lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the country road
with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.
3312
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of which
she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from under the
kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
3313
Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds of
times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess Mary in
Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead of a
midwife.
3314
"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.
3315
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of the
prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the larks
returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the damask
curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill, snowy draft.
Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the stocking she was
knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to catch the open
casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her kerchief and her loose
locks of gray hair.
3316
"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue! " she said,
holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most likely
the doctor."
3317
"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet him,
he does not know Russian."
3318
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the newcomer.
As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the window a carriage
with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went out on the stairs. On
a banister post stood a tallow candle which guttered in the draft. On
the landing below, Philip, the footman, stood looking scared and
holding another candle. Still lower, beyond the turn of the staircase,
one could hear the footstep of someone in thick felt boots, and a voice
that seemed familiar to Princess Mary was saying something.
3319
"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"
3320
"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who was
downstairs.
3321
Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in
the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more
rapidly.
3322
"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be
too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the face
and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of which
covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman stood with
the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed and strangely
softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up the stairs and
embraced his sister.
3323
"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a reply-
which he would not have received, for the princess was unable to speak-
he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the doctor who
had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last post station),
and again embraced his sister.
3324
"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak
and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.
3325
CHAPTER IX
3326
The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on her
head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair lay round
her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy mouth with its
downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince Andrew entered
and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on which she was lying.
Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear and excitement, rested
on him without changing their expression. "I love you all and have done
no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so? Help me!" her look seemed to
say. She saw her husband, but did not realize the significance of his
appearance before her now. Prince Andrew went round the sofa and kissed
her forehead.
3327
"My darling!" he said- a word he had never used to her before. "God is
merciful...."
3328
She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
3329
"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!" said
her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not realize
that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her sufferings or
with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary Bogdanovna advised
Prince Andrew to leave the room.
3330
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess Mary,
again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk broke
off at every moment. They waited and listened.
3331
"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.
3332
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room next
to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and
became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with
his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless, animal
moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to the door,
and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
3333
"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.
3334
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more seconds
went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek- it could not be hers, she
could not scream like that- came from the bedroom. Prince Andrew ran to
the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of an infant.
3335
"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in
the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
is the baby born?"
3336
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail; tears
choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began to cry,
sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his shirt
sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling jaw, came
out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor gave him a
bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman rushed out and
seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the threshold. He went into
his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the same position he had seen
her in five minutes before and, despite the fixed eyes and the pallor
of the cheeks, the same expression was on her charming childlike face
with its upper lip covered with tiny black hair.
3337
"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have you
done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
3338
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and
squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.
3339
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his father's
room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing close to the
door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed like a vise
round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob like a child.
3340
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew went
up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss.
And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes.
"Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince
Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty
of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He could not weep. The old
man too came up and kissed the waxen little hands that lay quietly
crossed one on the other on her breast, and to him, too, her face
seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me, and why?" And at the
sight the old man turned angrily away.
3341
Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas Andreevich
was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her while the
priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red and wrinkled
soles and palms.
3342
His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of
dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and handed
him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat in another
room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in the font, and
awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up joyfully at the
baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded approval when she told
him that the wax with the baby's hair had not sunk in the font but had
floated.
3343
CHAPTER X
3344
Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks as
he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of the
family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties. Dolokhov
recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during his
convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond of
Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about her
son.
3345
"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for our
present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like a
reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him and
even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg when
they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it together? And
there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to bear the whole
burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go through! It's true he
has been reinstated, but how could they fail to do that? I think there
were not many such gallant sons of the fatherland out there as he. And
now- this duel! Have these people no feeling, or honor? Knowing him to
be an only son, to challenge him and shoot so straight! It's well God
had mercy on us. And what was it for? Who doesn't have intrigues
nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I see things he should have
shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for months. And then to call him
out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting because he owed him money! What
baseness! What meanness! I know you understand Fedya, my dear count;
that, believe me, is why I am so fond of you. Few people do understand
him. He is such a lofty, heavenly soul!"
3346
Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way no
one would have expected of him.
3347
"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't care
a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love so that
I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle if they
stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two or three
friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care about them in
so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them are harmful,
especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I have met loving,
noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any women- countesses or
cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet met that divine purity and
devotion I look for in women. If I found such a one I'd give my life
for her! But those!... and he made a gesture of contempt. "And believe
me, if I still value my life it is only because I still hope to meet
such a divine creature, who will regenerate, purify, and elevate me.
But you don't understand it."
3348
"Oh, yes, I quite understand, "answered Rostov, who was under his new
friend's influence.
3349
In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of the
happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas brought
many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl of
twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
3350
At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous
atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
charming girls. Every young man who came to the house- seeing those
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the fitful
bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly prattle of
young girls ready for anything and full of hope- experienced the same
feeling; sharing with the young folk of the Rostovs' household a
readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness.
3351
Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was Dolokhov,
whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She almost quarreled
with her brother about him. She insisted that he was a bad man, and
that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right and Dolokhov wrong,
and further that he was disagreeable and unnatural.
3352
"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything is
calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."
3353
"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that even
Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov- "you must understand what a
soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his mother. What a
heart!"
3354
"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And do
you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"
3355
"What nonsense..."
3356
"I'm certain of it; you'll see."
3357
Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care
for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time Dolokhov
appeared.
3358
Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance at
which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha blushed
when they saw his looks.
3359
It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the irresistible
influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
3360
Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but he
did not explain to himself what these new relations were. "They're
always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and Natasha. But he
was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as before and was less
frequently at home.
3361
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war with
Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders were
given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the regular
army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the militia.
Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow nothing but the
coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the whole interest of
these preparations for war lay in the fact that Nicholas would not hear
of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the termination of Denisov's
furlough after Christmas to return with him to their regiment. His
approaching departure did not prevent his amusing himself, but rather
gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the greater part of his time away
from home, at dinners, parties, and balls.
3362
CHAPTER XI
3363
On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing he had
rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he and Denisov
were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany. About twenty people
were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.
3364
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at
this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one
thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.
3365
Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been
invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he
noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also
noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,
Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a
lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have
happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly
sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both at
dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls that
Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the holidays.
3366
"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He
asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich48 is also going."
48
Denisov.
3367
"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who at
the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight. "I'm
even weady to dance the pas de chale."
3368
"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the Arkharovs;
they have a party."
3369
"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the question
he noticed that it should not have been put.
3370
"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya, and,
scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given Pierre at
the Club dinner.
3371
"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further confirmed
in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left immediately after
dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the matter.
3372
"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I told
you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He has
proposed to Sonya!"
3373
Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late, something
seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a suitable and
in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless, orphan girl. From
the point of view of the old countess and of society it was out of the
question for her to refuse him. And therefore Nicholas' first feeling
on hearing the news was one of anger with Sonya.... He tried to say,
"That's capital; of course she'll forget her childish promises and
accept the offer," but before he had time to say it Natasha began
again.
3374
"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a pause,
"she told him she loved another."
3375
"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.
3376
"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
once she has said..."
3377
"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.
3378
"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas- don't be angry- but I know
you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know for
certain that you won't marry her."
3379
"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to her.
What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.
3380
"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."
3381
And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.
3382
A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the first
time since his return that they had talked alone and about their love.
3383
"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more boldly, "if
you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and advantageous
match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."
3384
Sonya interrupted him.
3385
"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.
3386
"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."
3387
Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
3388
"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.
3389
"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to say
it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole truth. I
love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."
3390
"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.
3391
"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love
again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does not
wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
difficulty.
3392
"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
always shall, and I want nothing more."
3393
"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
misleading you."
3394
And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
3395
CHAPTER XII
3396
Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers as
they watched their young people executing their newly learned steps,
and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced till they
were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and women who
came to these balls with an air of condescension and found them most
enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these balls. The two
pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and were married
and so further increased the fame of these dances. What distinguished
them from others was the absence of host or hostess and the presence of
the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a feather and bowing
according to the rules of his art, as he collected the tickets from all
his visitors. There was the fact that only those came who wished to
dance and amuse themselves as girls of thirteen and fourteen do who are
wearing long dresses for the first time. With scarcely any exceptions
they all were, or seemed to be, pretty- so rapturous were their smiles
and so sparkling their eyes. Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom
Natasha, who was exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas
de chale, but at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and
the mazurka, which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had
taken a ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said,
was a great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls
were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her
explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so
that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
3397
Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with pink
ribbons.
3398
Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She was
not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
3399
"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.
3400
Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.
3401
"How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.
3402
"Who?"
3403
"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.
3404
"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.
3405
"Who are you talking about?"
3406
"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.
3407
Rostov smiled.
3408
"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you must dance," said
little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
former pupil of his.
3409
"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"
3410
"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had talent!"
3411
The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot, told
them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the young
people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best pupil, were
the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with his little feet
in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with Natasha, who,
though shy, went on carefully executing her steps. Denisov did not take
his eyes off her and beat time with his saber in a way that clearly
indicated that if he was not dancing it was because he would not and
not because he could not. In the middle of a figure he beckoned to
Rostov who was passing:
3412
"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish mazuwka
is this? But she does dance splendidly."
3413
Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the masterly
way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to Natasha:
3414
"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.
3415
When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
3416
"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"
3417
"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.
3418
"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.
3419
"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.
3420
"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.
3421
"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow he
felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked sideways
at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly stamped with
one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew round the room
taking his partner with him. He glided silently on one foot half across
the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs was dashing straight at
them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and spreading out his legs, he
stopped short on his heels, stood so a second, stamped on the spot
clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round, and, striking his left heel
against his right, flew round again in a circle. Natasha guessed what
he meant to do, and abandoning herself to him followed his lead hardly
knowing how. First he spun her round, holding her now with his left,
now with his right hand, then falling on one knee he twirled her round
him, and again jumping up, dashed so impetuously forward that it seemed
as if he would rush through the whole suite of rooms without drawing
breath, and then he suddenly stopped and performed some new and
unexpected steps. When at last, smartly whirling his partner round in
front of her chair, he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to
her, Natasha did not even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him
in amazement, smiling as if she did not recognize him.
3422
"What does this mean?" she brought out.
3423
Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,
everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and
again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about
Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and
mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not
leave her for the rest of the evening.
3424
CHAPTER XIII
3425
For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:
3426
As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know of,
and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell supper
tonight to my friends- come to the English Hotel.
3427
About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening. Some
twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat between
two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper money, and he
was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since his proposal and
Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought of how they would
meet.
3428
Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the
door, as though he had long expected him.
3429
"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll just
finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."
3430
"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.
3431
Dolokhov made no reply.
3432
"You may punt," he said.
3433
Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once had
with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov had
then said.
3434
"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if guessing
Rostov's thought.
3435
Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the Club
dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he had
felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually cruel,
action.
3436
Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke with
which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought of
anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
deliberately so that everyone could hear:
3437
"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who trusts
to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."
3438
"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.
3439
"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new pack
of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"
3440
Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.
3441
"Why don't you play?" he asked.
3442
And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up a
card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
3443
"I have no money with me," he said.
3444
"I'll trust you."
3445
Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and again
lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's running.
3446
"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."
3447
One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
3448
"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't stint
yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.
3449
The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
3450
All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles scored
up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while the waiter
filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to his usual stake
of twenty rubles.
3451
"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking at
Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others but
win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.
3452
Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a seven
of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the floor. He
well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the seven of
hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written "800 rubles"
in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm champagne that
was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with a sinking heart,
waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's hands which held
the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing on that seven of
hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had given his son two
thousand rubles, and though he always disliked speaking of money
difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all he could let him have
till May, and asked him to be more economical this time. Nicholas had
replied that it would be more than enough for him and that he gave his
word of honor not to take anything more till the spring. Now only
twelve hundred rubles was left of that money, so that this seven of
hearts meant for him not only the loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but
the necessity of going back on his word. With a sinking heart he
watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now then, make haste and let me
have this card and I'll take my cap and drive home to supper with
Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will certainly never touch a card
again." At that moment his home life, jokes with Petya, talks with
Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his father, and even his
comfortable bed in the house on the Povarskaya rose before him with
such vividness, clearness, and charm that it seemed as if it were all a
lost and unappreciated bliss, long past. He could not conceive that a
stupid chance, letting the seven be dealt to the right rather than to
the left, might deprive him of all this happiness, newly appreciated
and newly illumined, and plunge him into the depths of unknown and
undefined misery. That could not be, yet he awaited with a sinking
heart the movement of Dolokhov's hands. Those broad, reddish hands,
with hairy wrists visible from under the shirt cuffs, laid down the
pack and took up a glass and a pipe that were handed him.
3453
"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as if
about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in his
chair, and began deliberately with a smile:
3454
"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow that
I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."
3455
"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.
3456
"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the cards
with a smile.
3457
"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The seven
he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He had lost
more than he could pay.
3458
"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at
Rostov as he continued to deal.
3459
CHAPTER XIV
3460
An hour and a half later most of the players were but little interested
in their own play.
3461
The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he vaguely
supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it already
exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to
stories or telling them, but followed every movement of Rostov's hands
and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against him. He had
decided to play until that score reached forty-three thousand. He had
fixed on that number because forty-three was the sum of his and Sonya's
joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both hands, sat at the table
which was scrawled over with figures, wet with spilled wine, and
littered with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: that
those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy wrists visible from under
the shirt sleeves, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in
their power.
3462
"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him, and
at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at the
bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came first to
hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him, now counted
the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and tried
staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round for aid
from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of Dolokhov and
tried to read what was passing in his mind.
3463
"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my ruin.
Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his fault.
What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault either,"
he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed
anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a terrible
misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago I came to
this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to buy that
casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so happy, so
free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I was! When did
that end and when did this new, terrible state of things begin? What
marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place at this table,
chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned agile hands in
the same way. When did it happen and what has happened? I am well and
strong and still the same and in the same place. No, it can't be!
Surely it will all end in nothing!"
3464
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not hot.
His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its helpless
efforts to seem calm.
3465
The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three thousand.
Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of which he
meant to double the three thousand just put down to his score, when
Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside and began
rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the chalk as he
marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
3466
"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"
3467
Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold outside
and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas understood that
it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
3468
"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it were
the fun of the game which interested him most.
3469
"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-
that's all that's left me! " And at the same time he said in a cheerful
voice:
3470
"Come now, just this one more little card!"
3471
"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All right!
Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure twenty-one by which
the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three thousand; and taking up
a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov submissively unbent the corner of
his card and, instead of the six thousand he had intended, carefully
wrote twenty-one.
3472
"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether you
will let me win this ten, or beat it."
3473
Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that
moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy wrists,
which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.
3474
"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so long,"
he added.
3475
"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.
3476
Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for him to
jest.
3477
"When am I to receive the money, Count?"
3478
Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.
3479
"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.
3480
"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."
3481
"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power," thought
Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father and mother
by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be to escape
it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him from all
this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a cat does
with a mouse.
3482
"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted him.
3483
"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to
mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.
3484
"Then when am I to have it?"
3485
"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.
3486
CHAPTER XV
3487
To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult, but
to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father, confess
and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word of honor,
was terrible.
3488
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round the
clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that poetic
atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that winter and,
now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed to have grown
thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a thunderstorm.
Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had worn at the
theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing by the
clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with Shinshin in
the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return of her
husband and son, sat playing patience with the old gentlewoman who
lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and ruffled hair,
sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short fingers, his legs
thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with his small, husky, but
true voice, some verses called "Enchantress," which he had composed,
and to which he was trying to fit music:
3489
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
3490
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his
sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.
3491
"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she said,
without noticing Nicholas.
3492
"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas, glancing
into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother with the old
lady.
3493
"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.
3494
"Is Papa at home?" he asked.
3495
"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We
are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my
sake! Did you know?"
3496
"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.
3497
"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old countess
from the drawing room.
3498
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her
table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing
room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade
Natasha to sing.
3499
"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making excuses
now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!"
3500
The countess glanced at her silent son.
3501
"What is the matter?" she asked.
3502
"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same
question. "Will Papa be back soon?"
3503
"I expect so."
3504
"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am
I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where
the clavichord stood.
3505
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denisov's
favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing. Denisov was looking
at her with enraptured eyes.
3506
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
3507
"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's nothing
to be happy about!" thought he.
3508
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
3509
"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is
the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on. "Go away?
But where to? It's one- let them sing!"
3510
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the
girls and avoiding their eyes.
3511
"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
3512
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,
had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed
it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment
by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to herself:
"No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am."
3513
"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she
considered the resonance was best.
3514
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet
dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes,
stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
3515
"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which
Denisov followed her.
3516
"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"
3517
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which leave
you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill you
and make you weep.
3518
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously,
mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang
as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish,
painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing
well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: "It is not trained,
but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained." Only they generally
said this some time after she had finished singing. While that
untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions,
was sounding, even the connoisseurs said nothing, but only delighted in
it and wished to hear it again. In her voice there was a virginal
freshness, an unconsciousness of her own powers, and an as yet
untrained velvety softness, which so mingled with her lack of art in
singing that it seemed as if nothing in that voice could be altered
without spoiling it.
3519
"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely opened
eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And
suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the next
note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided into
three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one, two,
three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... One.
"Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this misery,
and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all nonsense... but
this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest! Now then,
darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank God!" And
without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a
second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did I really
take it? How fortunate!" he thought.
3520
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was
finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from everything
else in the world and above everything in the world. "What were losses,
and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and
rob and yet be happy..."
3521
CHAPTER XVI
3522
It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he did
that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than
reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and
went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old
count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing
him drive up, went to meet him.
3523
"Well- had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and proudly
at his son.
3524
Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
condition.
3525
"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and last
time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him feel
ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his father to let
him have the carriage to drive to town:
3526
"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting. I
need some money."
3527
"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I told
you it would not be enough. How much?"
3528
"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless smile,
for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a little,
I mean a good deal, a great deal- forty three thousand."
3529
"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening with
an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
3530
"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.
3531
"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
helplessly on the sofa.
3532
"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a bold,
free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as a
worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He
longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but
said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!
3533
The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and began
bustlingly searching for something.
3534
"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"
3535
And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of the
room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at all
expected this.
3536
"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And seizing
his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into tears.
3537
While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to
her mother, quite excited.
3538
"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."
3539
"Made what?"
3540
"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.
3541
The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To whom?
To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing with
dolls and who was still having lessons.
3542
"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.
3543
"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha
indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
'nonsense!'"
3544
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
3545
"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell him he
is a fool, that's all!"
3546
"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.
3547
"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well, if you
are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of annoyance.
"Good luck to you!"
3548
"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
him."
3549
"Well then, tell him so."
3550
"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"
3551
"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?" said
the countess smiling.
3552
"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very well
for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have seen
how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
accidently."
3553
"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."
3554
"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."
3555
"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
3556
"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say it."
3557
"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself," said
the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
little Natasha as grown up.
3558
"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen at
the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing hall,
where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord with his
face in his hands.
3559
He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
3560
"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my fate.
It is in your hands."
3561
"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so nice...
but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall always love
you."
3562
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did not
understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this instant,
they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She came up to
them.
3563
"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov- "but my
daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you would
have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would not have
obliged me to give this refusal."
3564
"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
tried to say more, but faltered.
3565
Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She began
to sob aloud.
3566
"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and seeing
her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing her hand,
he left the room with quick resolute strides, without looking at
Natasha.
3567
Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day in
Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell entertainment
at the gypsies', with the result that he had no recollection of how he
was put in the sleigh or of the first three stages of his journey.
3568
After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.
3569
Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
her.
3570
He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at last
sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and received his
receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking leave of any of
his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which was already in
Poland.
3571
BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
3572
CHAPTER I
3573
After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
3574
"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.
3575
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on
around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at
this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it was
a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours or
for the rest of his life.
3576
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without
changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could go
on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed him. He
had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day he returned
from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first agonizing,
sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey, they seized
him with special force. No matter what he thought about, he always
returned to these same questions which he could not solve and yet could
not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the chief screw
which held his life together were stripped, so that the screw could not
get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the same place.
3577
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his excellency to
wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let his excellency
have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying and only wanted
to get more money from the traveler.
3578
"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he
needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses. But
the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I considered
myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they considered him
a criminal, and a year later they executed those who executed him- also
for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What should one love and
what hate? What does one live for? And what am I? What is life, and
what is death? What power governs all?"
3579
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not
a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was:
"You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease
asking." But dying was also dreadful.
3580
The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering her
wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want the
money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to happiness or
peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me less a prey to
evil and death?- death which ends all and must come today or tomorrow-
at any rate, in an instant as compared with eternity." And again he
twisted the screw with the stripped thread, and again it turned
uselessly in the same place.
3581
His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters, by
Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put into
her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife- as she once
was- did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has been
found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself. "All we
can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of human
wisdom."
3582
Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
3583
"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
3584
The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old man,
with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
grayish color.
3585
Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a bed
that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the newcomer,
who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off his wraps
with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With a pair of
felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,
nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,
leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped hair,
and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating expression
of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to the stranger,
but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a question about the
roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His shriveled old hands were
folded and on the finger of one of them Pierre noticed a large cast
iron ring with a seal representing a death's head. The stranger sat
without stirring, either resting or, as it seemed to Pierre, sunk in
profound and calm meditation. His servant was also a yellow, wrinkled
old man, without beard or mustache, evidently not because he was shaven
but because they had never grown. This active old servant was unpacking
the traveler's canteen and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling
samovar. When everything was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved
to the table, filled a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the
beardless old man to whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of
uneasiness, and the need, even the inevitability, of entering into
conversation with this stranger.
3586
The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,49
with an unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more
would be wanted.
49
To indicate he did not want more tea.
3587
"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.
3588
The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional
work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him. All
at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and again,
leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his former
position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not time to
turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady and
severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.
3589
Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright old
eyes attracted him irresistibly.
3590
CHAPTER II
3591
"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.
3592
Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.
3593
"I have heard of you, my dear sir, "continued the stranger, "and of
your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to say-
"Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what happened to
you in Moscow was a misfortune."- "I regret it very much, my dear sir."
3594
Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed, bent
forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.
3595
"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but for
greater reasons."
3596
He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa by way
of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt reluctant
to enter into conversation with this old man, but, submitting to him
involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.
3597
"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are young
and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my power."
3598
"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful to
you. Where are you traveling from?"
3599
The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but in
spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
3600
"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said the old
man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an unexpected
and tenderly paternal way.
3601
"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's
hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull- a Masonic
sign.
3602
"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"
3603
"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the
stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in their
name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."
3604
"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his own
habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs- "I am afraid I am very far
from understanding- how am I to put it?- I am afraid my way of looking
at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not understand one
another."
3605
"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if I
had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of life is
a regrettable delusion."
3606
"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
smile.
3607
"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the Mason,
whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision and
firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying stone
on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of generations
from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that temple reared which
is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great God," he added, and
closed his eyes.
3608
"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,
said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
speak the whole truth.
3609
The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he,
poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.
3610
"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."
3611
"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"
3612
"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You do not
know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is in
thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just uttered!"
pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
3613
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
3614
"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be speaking of
Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking? Whom hast thou
denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity and authority in his
voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist? Whence came thy
conception of the existence of such an incomprehensible Being? didst
thou, and why did the whole world, conceive the idea of the existence
of such an incomprehensible Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and
infinite in all His attributes?..."
3615
He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
3616
Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
3617
"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the leaves
of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could not keep
still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I could bring
him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to thee. But how
can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence, His infinity, and
all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts his eyes that he may
not see or understand Him and may not see or understand his own
vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art thou? Thou dreamest
that thou art wise because thou couldst utter those blasphemous words,"
he went on, with a somber and scornful smile. "And thou art more
foolish and unreasonable than a little child, who, playing with the
parts of a skillfully made watch, dares to say that, as he does not
understand its use, he does not believe in the master who made it. To
know Him is hard.... For ages, from our forefather Adam to our own day,
we labor to attain that knowledge and are still infinitely far from our
aim; but in our lack of understanding we see only our weakness and His
greatness...."
3618
Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face with
shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but believing with
his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he accepted the wise
reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or believed as a child
believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction and earnestness, or the
tremor of the speaker's voice- which sometimes almost broke- or those
brilliant aged eyes grown old in this conviction, or the calm firmness
and certainty of his vocation, which radiated from his whole being (and
which struck Pierre especially by contrast with his own dejection and
hopelessness)- at any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to
believe and he did believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort,
regeneration, and return to life.
3619
"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the Mason.
3620
"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness, in
the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him. "I
don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man cannot
attain the knowledge of which you speak."
3621
The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
3622
"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish to
imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure vessel
and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of myself can I
retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."
3623
"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.
3624
"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one. The
highest wisdom has but one science- the science of the whole- the
science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To receive
that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner self, and
so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to perfect one's
self. And to attain this end, we have the light called conscience that
God has implanted in our souls."
3625
"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
3626
"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich, you
are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all
these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"
3627
"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.
3628
"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How
have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have become
the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you done for
your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of thousands of
slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally? No! You have
profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is what you have
done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of service to your
neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness. Then you married,
my dear sir- took on yourself responsibility for the guidance of a
young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped her to find
the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an abyss of
deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and you say you
do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing strange in that,
my dear sir!"
3629
After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse, again
leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Pierre
looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face and moved
his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a vile,
idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.
3630
The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called his
servant.
3631
"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.
3632
"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will you
not rest here?"
3633
"No, tell them to harness."
3634
"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a contemptible
and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not want to,"
thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he wished to,
could disclose it to me."
3635
Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
3636
"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"
3637
"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what you
would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it is
I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me, and
perhaps I may..."
3638
Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
3639
The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.
3640
"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as our
Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook and
wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four). "Allow me
to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital, first of all
devote some time to solitude and self-examination and do not resume
your former way of life. And now I wish you a good journey, my dear
sir," he added, seeing that his servant had entered... "and success."
3641
The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he had
gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and down
the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous sense
of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful, irreproachable,
virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It seemed to him that he
had been vicious only because he had somehow forgotten how good it is
to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former doubts remained in his soul.
He firmly believed in the possibility of the brotherhood of men united
in the aim of supporting one another in the path of virtue, and that is
how Freemasonry presented itself to him.
3642
CHAPTER III
3643
On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his arrival,
he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a Kempis, whose
book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing he continually
realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto unknown to him, of
believing in the possibility of attaining perfection, and in the
possibility of active brotherly love among men, which Joseph Alexeevich
had revealed to him. A week after his arrival, the young Polish count,
Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in Petersburg society, came
into his room one evening in the official and ceremonious manner in
which Dolokhov's second had called on him, and, having closed the door
behind him and satisfied himself that there was nobody else in the
room, addressed Pierre.
3644
"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said
without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our
Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish
to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"
3645
The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always before
met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most brilliant
women, surprised Pierre.
3646
"Yes, I do wish it," said he.
3647
Willarski bowed his head.
3648
"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all
sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
renounced your former convictions- do you believe in God?"
3649
Pierre considered.
3650
"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.
3651
"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.
3652
"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.
3653
"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
service."
3654
Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries as to
what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied that
brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had only to
tell the truth.
3655
Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had its
headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a
small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the
aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in
strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him,
said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to a
small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never
seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski bound
Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching some hairs
painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed him, and
taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the knot hurt
Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a shamefaced smile.
His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a puckered, though
smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain, timid steps.
3656
Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
3657
"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully if
you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.
3658
Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to take
it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his eyes
bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs almost
gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He experienced a
variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of what would happen
to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He felt curious to
know what was going to happen and what would be revealed to him; but
most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had come when he would at
last start on that path of regeneration and on the actively virtuous
life of which he had been dreaming since he met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud
knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took the bandage off his eyes and
glanced around him. The room was in black darkness, only a small lamp
was burning inside something white. Pierre went nearer and saw that the
lamp stood on a black table on which lay an open book. The book was the
Gospel, and the white thing with the lamp inside was a human skull with
its cavities and teeth. After reading the first words of the Gospel:
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went
round the table and saw a large open box filled with something. It was
a coffin with bones inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw.
Hoping to enter on an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he
expected everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was
seeing. A skull, a coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had
expected all this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he
looked around. "God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept
saying to himself, associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas.
The door opened and someone came in.
3659
By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed, he saw
rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
3660
This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his chest and
part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which rose a high
white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit up from
below.
3661
"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in
Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have
you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not seen
the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
enlightenment?"
3662
At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre felt a
sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his boyhood
at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially a
complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.
With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by
which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the
Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor a
man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the
newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him simply a brother and a
virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so that
the Rhetor had to repeat his question.
3663
"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with difficulty.
3664
"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any idea
of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach your aim?"
said he quietly and quickly.
3665
"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
Russian.
3666
"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"
3667
"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men who
have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the inadequacy of
his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he spoke. "I imagine..."
3668
"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this answer.
"Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"
3669
"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said Pierre, so
softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him what he was
saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.
3670
"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the Rhetor,
after a moment's pause.
3671
"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
3672
The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his breast,
and began to speak.
3673
"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said, "and
if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood with
profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation on
which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the
preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important
mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from
the first man- a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends.
But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use
it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not
everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim,
that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their
hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to us
by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery, and
thereby to render them capable of receiving it.
3674
"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to improve
the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of piety
and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the evil which
sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you again."
3675
"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his mind.
He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and he
addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and deed,
imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the three objects
mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving mankind,
especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery mentioned by the
Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem to him essential,
and the second aim, that of purifying and regenerating himself, did not
much interest him because at that moment he felt with delight that he
was already perfectly cured of his former faults and was ready for all
that was good.
3676
Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of the
seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's temple,
which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These virtues were:
1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order. 2. Obedience to
those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4. Love of mankind. 5.
Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
3677
"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense and
peace."
3678
"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be so,
but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which is
only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other virtues
which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt already in
his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind, and
especially obedience- which did not even seem to him a virtue, but a
joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to
submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot
what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.
3679
The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
all that would be required of him.
3680
"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.
3681
"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order delivers its
teaching not in words only but also by other means, which may perhaps
have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after wisdom and virtue
than mere words. This chamber with what you see therein should already
have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere, more than words could
do. You will perhaps also see in your further initiation a like method
of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the ancient societies that
explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph," said the
Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not cognizable by the senses but
which possesses qualities resembling those of the symbol."
3682
Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
ordeal was about to begin.
3683
"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give me
all your valuables."
3684
"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was asked
to give up all he possessed.
3685
"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."
3686
Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage for
some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that had
been done, the Rhetor said:
3687
"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."
3688
Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to the
Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's left
breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his trousers to
above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his right boot also
and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save this stranger
the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not necessary and gave him
a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike smile of embarrassment,
doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on his face against his will,
Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and legs apart, before his
brother Rhetor, and awaited his further commands.
3689
"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
passion," said the latter.
3690
"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.
3691
"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on the
path of virtue," said the Mason.
3692
Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
3693
"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to give
the pre-eminence.
3694
"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
3695
The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that lay
on the table, again bound his eyes.
3696
"For the last time I say to you- turn all your attention upon yourself,
put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in passion but
in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not without us but
within...."
3697
Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing source
of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.
3698
CHAPTER IV
3699
Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre, not
the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized by his
voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his resolution Pierre
replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming, childlike smile, his
fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and timidly in one slippered and
one booted foot, he advanced, while Willarski held a sword to his bare
chest. He was conducted from that room along passages that turned
backwards and forwards and was at last brought to the doors of the
Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was answered by the Masonic knock with
mallets, the doors opened before them. A bass voice (Pierre was still
blindfold) questioned him as to who he was, when and where he was born,
and so on. Then he was again led somewhere still blindfold, and as they
went along he was told allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of
holy friendship, of the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the
courage with which he should endure toils and dangers. During these
wanderings, Pierre noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker,"
now as the "Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment
of various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to
some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his
conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of
them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After that
they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to hold
a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to
repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of
the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,
as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the
lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint
light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men
standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce it.
But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once blindfolded
again.
3700
"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the
candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;
the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said together:
"Sic transit gloria mundi."
3701
Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the room
and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black sat some
twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some of them
Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair sat a
young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from his neck.
On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at Anna
Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very
distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words of
the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was a
star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet with
various figures worked upon it, at the other was something resembling
an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it stood seven
large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the brothers led
Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right angles, and bade him
lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself at the Gates of the
Temple.
3702
"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.
3703
"Oh, hush, please!" said another.
3704
Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I
doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at
his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before.
When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white
leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a
trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master addressed
him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain the
whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity; then of
the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse his own
heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart of his
neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that Pierre
could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second pair of
man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of the third,
a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these woman's gloves
are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom you shall honor
most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity of heart to her
whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in Masonry." And after a
pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that these gloves do not
deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand Master said these last
words it seemed to Pierre that he grew embarrassed. Pierre himself grew
still more confused, blushed like a child till tears came to his eyes,
began looking about him uneasily, and an awkward pause followed.
3705
This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to
the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation
of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows, and
so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs of
the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit down.
The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very long, and
Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a state to
understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the last
words of the statutes and these remained in his mind.
3706
"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the Grand
Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid
whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that falleth,
never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and
courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy
happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that
bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him
good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of the
ancient dignity which thou hast lost."
3707
He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with
tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to answer
the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met him on
all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all these men
only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work with them.
3708
The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down in
their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the necessity of
humility.
3709
The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed, and
the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of Alms"
went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to subscribe
all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride subscribed the
same amount as the others.
3710
The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he
had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of years,
had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his former
habits and way of life.
3711
CHAPTER V
3712
The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was sitting
at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance of the
Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things, a third
physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now and then
his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he formed in
imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at the Lodge,
he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the Emperor and that
it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre proposed going to
his estates in the south and there attending to the welfare of his
serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when Prince Vasili
suddenly entered the room.
3713
"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said Prince
Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was before
the Jews."
3714
Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.
3715
"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I know
all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as becomes a
man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go into that.
But consider the position in which you are placing her and me in the
eyes of society, and even of the court," he added, lowering his voice.
"She is living in Moscow and you are here. Remember, dear boy," and he
drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply a misunderstanding. I expect
you feel it so yourself. Let us write her a letter at once, and she'll
come here and all will be explained, or else, my dear boy, let me tell
you it's quite likely you'll have to suffer for it."
3716
Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.
3717
"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a keen
interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to Helene."
3718
Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili
did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he had
firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words of the
Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him. He
blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with himself
to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life- to say an
unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other, whoever he
might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to Prince
Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he would be
unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what he said now
his future depended- whether he would follow the same old road, or that
new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on which he firmly
believed he would be reborn to a new life.
3719
"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and I'll
write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."
3720
But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
father, muttered in a whisper:
3721
"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up and
opened the door for him.
3722
"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.
3723
"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"
3724
"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go without
receiving any explanation.
3725
A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the
Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went away
to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and
Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new
activity.
3726
CHAPTER VI
3727
The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite of the
Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the principals
nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the duel, confirmed
by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of society. Pierre who
had been regarded with patronizing condescension when he was an
illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was the best match in
Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society after his marriage-
when the marriageable daughters and their mothers had nothing to hope
from him- especially as he did not know how, and did not wish, to court
society's favor. Now he alone was blamed for what had happened, he was
said to be insanely jealous and subject like his father to fits of
bloodthirsty rage. And when after Pierre's departure Helene returned to
Petersburg, she was received by all her acquaintances not only
cordially, but even with a shade of deference due to her misfortune.
When conversation turned on her husband Helene assumed a dignified
expression, which with characteristic tact she had acquired though she
did not understand its significance. This expression suggested that she
had resolved to endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her
husband was a cross laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his
opinion more openly. He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was
mentioned and, pointing to his forehead, remarked:
3728
"A bit touched- I always said so."
3729
"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre, "I
said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her priority)
"that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved ideas of
these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was in raptures
about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and when, if you
remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my soirees. And how has
it ended? I was against this marriage even then and foretold all that
has happened."
3730
Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
soirees as before- such as she alone had the gift of arranging- at
which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom of
the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it. Besides
this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions were also
distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new and
interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the state
of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court society so
dearly and distinctly indicated.
3731
Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the
surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when
our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with Napoleon
was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The "cream of
really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene, forsaken by
her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte who had just
returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a young man
referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit" (un homme de
beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor and her mother,
and several other less noteworthy persons.
3732
The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening
was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
3733
The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company that
evening was this:
3734
"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to countenance
Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance and
mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not
cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say to
the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as voulu,
George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"
3735
When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the drawing
room, almost all the company had assembled, and the conversation,
guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic relations with
Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.
3736
Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and self-possessed,
entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the uniform of an
aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his respects to the aunt and
then brought back to the general circle.
3737
Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him to
several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered
description of each. charge d'affaires from Copenhagen- a profound
intellect," and simply, "Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit"- this of the
man usually so described.
3738
Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He
had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which he
had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign might
rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to which what
was needed for success in the service was not effort or work, or
courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to get on with
those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often surprised at the
rapidity of his success and at the inability of others to understand
these things. In consequence of this discovery his whole manner of
life, all his relations with old friends, all his plans for his future,
were completely altered. He was not rich, but would spend his last
groat to be better dressed than others, and would rather deprive
himself of many pleasures than allow himself to be seen in a shabby
equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in an old uniform. He
made friends with and sought the acquaintance of only those above him
in position and who could therefore be of use to him. He liked
Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of the Rostovs' house
and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant to him and he had
not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of his departure for the
army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he considered an important
step up in the service, and he at once understood his role, letting his
hostess make use of whatever interest he had to offer. He himself
carefully scanned each face, appraising the possibilities of
establishing intimacy with each of those present, and the advantages
that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to him beside the fair
Helene and listened to the general conversation.
3739
"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable that
not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure them,
and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the actual
phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge d'affaires.
3740
"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect," with a
subtle smile.
3741
"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have
thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."
3742
"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some reason
she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined French
pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing with a
Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."50
50
"Europe will never be our sincere ally."
3743
After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the King
of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.
3744
Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his turn,
but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his neighbor, the
beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those of the handsome
young aide-de-camp with a smile.
3745
Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally asked
Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state he
found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told them
in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies and
the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of his own
about the facts he was recounting. For some time he engrossed the
general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the novelty she had
served up was received with pleasure by all her visitors. The greatest
attention of all to Boris' narrative was shown by Helene. She asked him
several questions about his journey and seemed greatly interested in
the state of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished she turned
to him with her usual smile.
3746
"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that implied
that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this was
absolutely necessary.
3747
"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."
3748
Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the
pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
3749
"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her eyes
and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is such an
unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before her- please
don't! It is too painful for her!"
3750
CHAPTER VII
3751
When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
had the ear of the company.
3752
Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and having
said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
3753
"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again laughing, and
then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna Pavlovna waited
for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to say no more she
began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious Bonaparte had stolen the
sword of Frederick the Great.
3754
"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
again, as soon as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and
said no more.
3755
Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed him
firmly.
3756
"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"
3757
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
3758
"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a joke
he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that evening to
get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight pour le Roi de
Prusse!"
3759
Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
laughed.
3760
"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
3761
"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right principles.
Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.
3762
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on the
political news. It became particularly animated toward the end of the
evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were mentioned.
3763
"You know N- N- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?" said
"the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S- S- get the same
distinction?"
3764
"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but not
a distinction," said the diplomatist- "a gift, rather."
3765
"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."
3766
"It's impossible," replied another.
3767
"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."
3768
When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the
evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.
3769
"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile
toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile with
which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's wish.
3770
It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening about the
Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see him. She
seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he came on
Tuesday.
3771
But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon, Boris
received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for him to
come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to him,
and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said unexpectedly and in
a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face: "Come to dinner tomorrow...
in the evening. You must come.... Come!"
3772
During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
countess' house.
3773
CHAPTER VIII
3774
The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier. Everywhere one
heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind." Militiamen and
recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and from the seat of war
came contradictory news, false as usual and therefore variously
interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski, Prince Andrew, and
Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
3775
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout Russia.
Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly noticeable
since the time when he thought his son had been killed, he did not
think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the
Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for action gave him new
energy and strength. He was continually traveling through the three
provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic in the fulfillment of his
duties, severe to cruelty with his subordinates, and went into
everything down to the minutest details himself. Princess Mary had
ceased taking lessons in mathematics from her father, and when the old
prince was at home went to his study with the wet nurse and little
Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called him). The baby Prince
Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse Savishna in the late
princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of the day in the nursery,
taking a mother's place to her little nephew as best she could.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately fond of the boy, and
Princess Mary often deprived herself to give her friend the pleasure of
dandling the little angel- as she called her nephew- and playing with
him.
3776
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over the
tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble monument
brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread wings ready to
fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly raised as though about
to smile, and once on coming out of the chapel Prince Andrew and
Princess Mary admitted to one another that the angel's face reminded
them strangely of the little princess. But what was still stranger,
though of this Prince Andrew said nothing to his sister, was that in
the expression the sculptor had happened to give the angel's face,
Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he had read on the face of
his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this to me?"
3777
Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him a
large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald Hills.
Partly because of the depressing memories associated with Bald Hills,
partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal to bearing with
his father's peculiarities, and partly because he needed solitude,
Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building and spent most of
his time there.
3778
After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved not to
continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and
everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his son
seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old man,
roused by activity, expected the best results from the new campaign,
while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the war and
secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
3779
On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman
who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and
letters for Prince Andrew.
3780
Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there. He
was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.
3781
"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some papers,"
said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting on a
child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of
water.
3782
"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking unintentionally,
he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the mixture onto the
floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought it.
3783
There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew was
sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was burning on
the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light did not
fall on the cot.
3784
"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside the
cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."
3785
"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things off-
and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an exasperated
whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
3786
"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep," said
the princess in a tone of entreaty.
3787
Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed, wineglass
in hand.
3788
"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.
3789
"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was calling
him in a whisper.
3790
It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the
boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their
household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,
they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by
sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one
another and reproached and disputed with each other.
3791
"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the maid.
3792
Prince Andrew went out.
3793
"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.
3794
"Well?" he asked.
3795
"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says that
sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary with a
sigh.
3796
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
3797
"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the drops
and again went up to the cot.
3798
"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.
3799
But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his eyes,
and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
3800
"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you- give it him!"
3801
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and
sat down on a sofa in the next room.
3802
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them mechanically he
began reading. The old prince, now and then using abbreviations, wrote
in his large elongated hand on blue paper as follows:
3803
Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful news-
if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete victory
over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing, and the
rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a German- I
congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at Korchevo- a
certain Khandrikov- is up to; till now the additional men and
provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say I'll
have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have received
another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from Petenka- he took
part in it- and it's all true. When mischief-makers don't meddle even a
German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be fleeing in great disorder.
Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without delay and carry out
instructions!
3804
Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It was a
closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded it up
without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with the
words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"
3805
"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought he,
going to the door and looking into the nursery.
3806
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the baby.
3807
"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a victory
over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's always poking
fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading Bilibin's letter
which was written in French. He read without understanding half of it,
read only to forget, if but for a moment, what he had too long been
thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of all else.
3808
CHAPTER IX
3809
Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms, he
described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation of
diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in Prince
Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the bile he
had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the army.
The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
Preussisch-Eylau.
3810
"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote Bilibin,
"as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I have
certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for me; what
I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
3811
"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks
the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only
betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it
turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our fine
speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the Prussians
without giving them time to finish the parade they had begun, and in
two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and installs
himself in the palace at Potsdam.
3812
"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to Bonaparte,
'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my palace in a
manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as circumstances allowed, I
have hastened to take all steps to that end. May I have succeeded!' The
Prussian generals pride themselves on being polite to the French and
lay down their arms at the first demand.
3813
"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender.... All
this is absolutely true.
3814
"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude, it
turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more, in
war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy
and triumph.
3815
"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails are
taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those meant
for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters addressed to
him. We search, but none are to be found. The field marshal grows
impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters from the Emperor
to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts into one of his wild
furies and rages at everyone and everything, seizes the letters, opens
them, and reads those from the Emperor addressed to others. 'Ah! So
that's the way they treat me! No confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep
an eye on me! Very well then! Get along with you!' So he writes the
famous order of the day to General Bennigsen:
3816
'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the army.
You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it is
exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done, and, as
you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must think of
retreating to our frontier- which do today.'
3817
"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a saddle
sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite prevents my
riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on the command
to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden, having sent him my
whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising him if there is a lack
of bread, to move farther into the interior of Prussia, for only one
day's ration of bread remains, and in some regiments none at all, as
reported by the division commanders, Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all
that the peasants had has been eaten up. I myself will remain in
hospital at Ostrolenka till I recover. In regard to which I humbly
submit my report, with the information that if the army remains in its
present bivouac another fortnight there will not be a healthy man left
in it by spring.
3818
"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great and
glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most gracious
permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play the part of a
secretary rather than commander in the army. My removal from the army
does not produce the slightest stir- a blind man has left it. There are
thousands such as I in Russia.'
3819
"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
isn't it logical?
3820
"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the
opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He
does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great
victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as you
know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won or lost.
Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say; and
according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In short, we
retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg with news of
a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive from Petersburg the
post of commander in chief as a reward for his victory, does not give
up the command of the army to General Buxhowden. During this
interregnum we begin a very original and interesting series of
maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should be, to avoid or attack
the enemy, but solely to avoid General Buxhowden who by right of
seniority should be our chief. So energetically do we pursue this aim
that after crossing an unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate
ourselves from our enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but
Buxhowden. General Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a
superior enemy force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled
us to escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses
the river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our
enemy. Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and
the result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on
Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the
news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But
as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-
namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,
biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads
impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last
campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour
the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The inhabitants
are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick, and famine is
everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our headquarters, and the
commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to disperse them. During
one of these attacks they carried off my empty portmanteau and my
dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all commanders of divisions
the right to shoot marauders, but I much fear this will oblige one half
the army to shoot the other."
3821
At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while, in
spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When he
had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away. It was
not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life out
there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his eyes,
rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what he had
read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly he
thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized with
alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he was
reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and opened
it.
3822
Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from him
with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the cot.
3823
"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
him.
3824
As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
seized by an unreasoning panic- it occurred to him that the child was
dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
3825
"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find it empty and
that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the curtain aside
and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could not find the
baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about till he lay
across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and was smacking
his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
3826
Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught him,
tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The soft
forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand; even
the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was not
dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent. Prince
Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart, this
helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him,
gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed under
the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow appeared under
the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but still gazing at the
infant's face listened to his regular breathing. The dark shadow was
Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with noiseless steps, lifted
the curtain, and dropped it again behind her. Prince Andrew recognized
her without looking and held out his hand to her. She pressed it.
3827
"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.
3828
"I was coming to tell you so."
3829
The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his forehead
against the pillow.
3830
Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain
her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy
that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him,
slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a warning
gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain as if not
wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut off from all
the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away, ruffling his hair
against the muslin of the curtain.
3831
"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.
3832
CHAPTER X
3833
Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went to the
Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs, taking with
him full directions which he had written down for his own guidance as
to what he should do on his estates.
3834
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that
steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then
they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their
babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to the
serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and
hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the
estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among
them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the young
count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of money,
some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp and the new
words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed hearing how the
master talked, while the cleverest among them, including the chief
steward, understood from this speech how they could best handle the
master for their own ends.
3835
The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,
but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go
into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
3836
Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into an
income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a year,
Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him an
allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:
3837
About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,
about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town
house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was
given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was
sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The
building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in
each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about
100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to
borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of
fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories and
workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for which he
had very little aptitude or inclination- practical business.
3838
He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he
felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the
state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the
necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities with
serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand, Pierre
demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs, which the
steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the loans from
the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy
emancipation.
3839
The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested selling
the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down the river,
and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all of which
operations according to him were connected with such complicated
measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions, permits, and so on-
that Pierre became quite bewildered and only replied:
3840
"Yes, yes, do so."
3841
Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled
him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only
tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The
steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he considered
these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and troublesome to
himself.
3842
In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened to
make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer, the
largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's greatest
weakness- the one to which he had confessed when admitted to the Lodge-
were so strong that he could not resist them. Again whole days, weeks,
and months of his life passed in as great a rush and were as much
occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches, and balls, giving him
no time for reflection, as in Petersburg. Instead of the new life he
had hoped to lead he still lived the old life, only in new
surroundings.
3843
Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of moral
life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two- morality and the
love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he fulfilled
another of the precepts- that of reforming the human race- and had
other virtues- love of his neighbor, and especially generosity.
3844
In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way he
intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his
orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom God
had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.
3845
The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts almost
insane- unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the serfs- made
some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation of the serfs
as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large buildings-
schools, hospitals, and asylums- on all the estates before the master
arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for ceremonious welcomes
(which he knew Pierre would not like), but for just such gratefully
religious ones, with offerings of icons and the bread and salt of
hospitality, as, according to his understanding of his master, would
touch and delude him.
3846
The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more
picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and
touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere were
receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a joyful
feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants presented
him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul,
asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits he had
conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at their own
expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In another place
the women with infants in arms met him to thank him for releasing them
from hard work. On a third estate the priest, bearing a cross, came to
meet him surrounded by children whom, by the count's generosity, he was
instructing in reading, writing, and religion. On all his estates
Pierre saw with his own eyes brick buildings erected or in course of
erection, all on one plan, for hospitals, schools, and almshouses,
which were soon to be opened. Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts,
according to which the serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and
heard the touching thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted
blue coats.
3847
What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter and
Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's day, and
that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had begun the
chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in that
villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know that
since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his land, they
did still harder work on their own land. He did not know that the
priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by his
exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let him take
their children and secured their release by heavy payments. He did not
know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being built by serfs
whose manorial labor was thus increased, though lessened on paper. He
did not know that where the steward had shown him in the accounts that
the serfs' payments had been diminished by a third, their obligatory
manorial work had been increased by a half. And so Pierre was delighted
with his visit to his estates and quite recovered the philanthropic
mood in which he had left Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to
his "brother-instructor" as he called the Grand Master.
3848
"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"
3849
He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
for these simple, kindly people.
3850
The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with a
toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above all
the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it was.
3851
Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though
reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do all
in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly that not
only would the count never be able to find out whether all measures had
been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to release them
from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire and would
never know that the newly erected buildings were standing empty and
that the serfs continued to give in money and work all that other
people's serfs gave- that is to say, all that could be got out of them.
3852
CHAPTER XI
3853
Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest state
of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of visiting
his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.
3854
Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which
were a few fir trees.
3855
The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables, a
bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly
laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps and a
water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were straight,
the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore an impress
of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre met, in
reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a small
newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked after
Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage, said
that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little
anteroom.
3856
Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house after
the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend in
Petersburg.
3857
He quickly entered the small reception room with its still-unplastered
wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone farther, but Anton
ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
3858
"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
3859
"A visitor," answered Anton.
3860
"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
back.
3861
Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to face
with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
and looked at him closely.
3862
"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.
3863
Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with surprise. He
was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly and there was a
smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and lifeless and in
spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give them a joyous and
glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner, paler, and more
manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre till he got used to
it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow indicating prolonged
concentration on some one thought.
3864
As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged
separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on
anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things they
knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the conversation
gradually settled on some of the topics at first lightly touched on:
their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's journeys and
occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and despondency
which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now still more
clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to Pierre,
especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past or the
future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to sympathize with
what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter began to feel that it
was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms, dreams, and hopes of
happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's presence. He was ashamed to
express his new Masonic views, which had been particularly revived and
strengthened by his late tour. He checked himself, fearing to seem
naive, yet he felt an irresistible desire to show his friend as soon as
possible that he was now a quite different, and better, Pierre than he
had been in Petersburg.
3865
"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
know myself again."
3866
"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince Andrew.
3867
"Well, and you? What are your plans?"
3868
"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said, as if
astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean to settle
here altogether next year...."
3869
Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face, which
had grown much older.
3870
"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew interrupted
him.
3871
"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your travels and
all you have been doing on your estates."
3872
Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as far
as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had been
made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what he
had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he
listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what
Pierre was telling him.
3873
Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company
and at last became silent.
3874
"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who evidently
also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I am only
bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am going back to
my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of course you know
her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a visitor with
whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after dinner. And
would you now like to look round my place?"
3875
They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the
political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know
each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and
interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its
buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of a
talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted
himself:
3876
"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and then
we'll set off."
3877
At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.
3878
"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.
3879
Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you know
it is all over, and forever."
3880
"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."
3881
"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"
3882
"And so you had to go through that too!"
3883
"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
Pierre.
3884
"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
thing really."
3885
"No, to kill a man is bad- wrong."
3886
"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to know
what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err,
and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."
3887
"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with
pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought him
to his present state.
3888
"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.
3889
"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for ourselves."
3890
"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing more
and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new outlook to
Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real evils in life:
remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of those evils. To
live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole philosophy now."
3891
"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No, I
can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to have
to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself and
ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others, only
now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall not agree
with you, and you do not really believe what you are saying." Prince
Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
3892
"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her," he
said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a short
pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for yourself and
say you nearly ruined your life and only found happiness when you began
living for others. I experienced just the reverse. I lived for glory.-
And after all what is glory? The same love of others, a desire to do
something for them, a desire for their approval.- So I lived for
others, and not almost, but quite, ruined my life. And I have become
calmer since I began to live only for myself."
3893
"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"
3894
"But that's just the same as myself- they are not others," explained
Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil. Le
prochain- your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."
3895
And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
evidently wished to draw him on.
3896
"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited. "What
error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even doing a
little- though I did very little and did it very badly? What evil can
there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people like ourselves,
were growing up and dying with no idea of God and truth beyond
ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed in a
comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done something
toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a good action, and
more than that, you can't make me believe that you do not think so
yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I know, and know
for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is the only sure
happiness in life."
3897
"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by
us. Well, you want an argument," he added, come on then."
3898
They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which
served as a veranda.
3899
"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools," he
went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you want
to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his
cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs,
while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness
possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him,
but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then
you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it, physical labor is as
essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental
activity is to you or me. You can't help thinking. I go to bed after
two in the morning, thoughts come and I can't sleep but toss about till
dawn, because I think and can't help thinking, just as he can't help
plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he would go to the drink shop or fall
ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labor but should
die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical idleness, but
would grow fat and die. The third thing- what else was it you talked
about?" and Prince Andrew crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals,
medicine. He has a fit, he is dying, and you come and bleed him and
patch him up. He will drag about as a cripple, a burden to everybody,
for another ten years. It would be far easier and simpler for him to
die. Others are being born and there are plenty of them as it is. It
would be different if you grudged losing a laborer- that's how I regard
him- but you want to cure him from love of him. And he does not want
that. And besides, what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone!
Killed them, yes!" said he, frowning angrily and turning away from
Pierre.
3900
Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that it was
evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he spoke
readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long time. His
glance became more animated as his conclusions became more hopeless.
3901
"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand how
one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long ago,
in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so that I
don't live at all- everything seems hateful to me... myself
3902
most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with
you?..."
3903
"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm
alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best I can
without hurting others."
3904
"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would sit
without moving, undertaking nothing...."
3905
"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do nothing,
but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me the honor to
choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to get out of it.
They could not understand that I have not the necessary qualifications
for it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness necessary for the
position. Then there's this house, which must be built in order to have
a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And now there's this
recruiting."
3906
"Why aren't you serving in the army?"
3907
"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active Russian
army. And I won't- not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
threatening Bald Hills- even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian army!
Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his composure, "now
there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command of the Third
District, and my only way of avoiding active service is to serve under
him."
3908
"Then you are serving?"
3909
"I am."
3910
He paused a little while.
3911
"And why do you serve?"
3912
"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men of
his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he has
too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited power that
he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a commander in chief
of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had been two hours late
a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's clerk at Yukhnovna
hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I am serving because I
alone have any influence with my father, and now and then can save him
from actions which would torment him afterwards."
3913
"Well, there you see!"
3914
"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been very
glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father- that again is
for myself."
3915
Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered
feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there
was no desire to do good to his neighbor.
3916
"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is a
very good thing, but not for you- I don't suppose you ever had anyone
flogged or sent to Siberia- and still less for your serfs. If they are
beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are any the
worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and the stripes
on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is a good
thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people I
pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You may
not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more irritable,
become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain
themselves and grow more and more miserable."
3917
Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his father's
case.
3918
He did not reply.
3919
"So that's what I'm sorry for- human dignity, peace of mind, purity,
and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you
may, always remain the same backs and foreheads."
3920
"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
Pierre.
3921
CHAPTER XII
3922
In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and drove
to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the silence now
and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good temper.
3923
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making in
his husbandry.
3924
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
3925
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did
not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid, enlighten,
and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he should say, he felt
that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument, would upset all his
teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid of exposing to possible
ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.
3926
"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his head
and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so? You
should not think so."
3927
"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
3928
"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought like
that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't smile.
Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it was:
Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal, aspects of
humanity."
3929
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality,
brotherhood, and love.
3930
"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the rest
is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that outside
this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree with you
that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to live out
his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But make our
fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood, give yourself
up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once feel yourself,
as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible chain the
beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.
3931
Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence to
Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels prevented
his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it, and by the
peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by his silence,
Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that Prince Andrew would
not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
3932
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they had
to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed on
it, they also stepped on the raft.
3933
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed silently at
the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
3934
"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you silent?"
3935
"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very
well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see what
you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I don't
see it."
3936
Pierre interrupted him.
3937
"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.
3938
"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no time
to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as he knew
Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.
3939
"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the end
of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to the
fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we who
are now the children of earth are- eternally- children of the whole
universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between
the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
beings in whom the Deity- the Supreme Power if you prefer the term- is
manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to man,
why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go farther and
farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing vanishes in this
world, but that I shall always exist and always have existed. I feel
that beyond me and above me there are spirits, and that in this world
there is truth."
3940
"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not that
which can convince me, dear friend- life and death are what convince.
What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound up with
one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped to make it
right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away), "and
suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe
there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me,"
said Prince Andrew.
3941
"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"
3942
"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere, and
you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have looked
in...."
3943
"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is- God."
3944
Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long since
been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The sun had
sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was starring the
puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the astonishment of
the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on the raft and
talked.
3945
"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and man's
highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must live, we
must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on this
scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there, in the
Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
3946
Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening to
Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of the
sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness. Pierre
became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the waves of
the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew felt as if the
sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words, whispering:
3947
"It is true, believe it."
3948
He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his superior
friend.
3949
"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is time to
get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at the sky
to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since Austerlitz
saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on that
battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering, something
that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and youthful, in his
soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the customary conditions of
his life, but he knew that this feeling which he did not know how to
develop existed within him. His meeting with Pierre formed an epoch in
Prince Andrew's life. Though outwardly he continued to live in the same
old way, inwardly he began a new life.
3950
CHAPTER XIII
3951
It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the front
entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the house,
Prince Andrew with asmile drew Pierre's attention to a commotion going
on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a wallet on her
back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black garment had rushed
back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up. Two women ran out
after them, and all four, looking round at the carriage, ran in dismay
up the steps of the back porch.
3952
"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have
mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she disobeys
him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she receives
them."
3953
"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
3954
Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet
them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was expected
back soon.
3955
The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any minute.
3956
Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always kept
in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house; he
himself went to the nursery.
3957
"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned. "I
have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her 'God's
folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you will see
her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."
3958
"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
3959
"Come, and you'll see for yourself."
3960
Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her face
when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before the icon
stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing a monk's
cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near them, in an
armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek expression on
her childlike face.
3961
"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild
reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her
chickens.
3962
"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"51
she said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,
and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife, and
above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward him.
She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to say, "I
like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people." After
exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
51
"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."
3963
"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
smile at the young pilgrim.
3964
"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez
que c'est une femme,"52 said Prince Andrew to Pierre.
52
"You must know that this is a woman."
3965
"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"53 Princess Mary repeated.
53
"For heaven's sake."
3966
It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the pilgrims
and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were their
customary long-established relations on the matter.
3967
"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au contraire
m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre intimite avec
ce jeune homme."54
54
"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for
explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."
3968
"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)
into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,
looked round at them all with crafty eyes.
3969
Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,
lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had turned
her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside it, and
sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered another cup of
tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked with sly womanish
eyes from under her brows at the young men.
3970
"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
3971
"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime I
was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at the
shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a great
and wonderful blessing has been revealed."
3972
"And was Ivanushka with you?"
3973
"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a bass
voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."
3974
Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell what
she had seen.
3975
"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."
3976
"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.
3977
"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him, Pelageya."
3978
"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he is
one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles, I
remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of God's
own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are you not
going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a wonder-working icon of
the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On hearing those words I
said good-by to the holy folk and went."
3979
All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
drawing in her breath.
3980
"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing has
been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed Mother,
the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."
3981
"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess Mary,
flushing.
3982
"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he
inquired.
3983
"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the face
like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek it drops
and drops...."
3984
"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who had
listened attentively to the pilgrim.
3985
"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
turning to Princess Mary for support.
3986
"They impose on the people," he repeated.
3987
"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing herself.
"Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did not believe,
and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said it he went blind.
And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the Kiev catacombs came
to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make you whole.' So he
begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the real truth I'm
telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought, quite blind, straight
to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and says, 'Make me whole,'
says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar bestowed on me.' I saw it
myself, master, the star is fixed into the icon. Well, and what do you
think? He received his sight! It's a sin to speak so. God will punish
you," she said admonishingly, turning to Pierre.
3988
"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.
3989
"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said Prince
Andrew, with a smile.
3990
Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.
3991
"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,
her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you
said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My
dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary. She
got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She evidently
felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a house where
such things could be said, and was at the same time sorry to have now
to forgo the charity of this house.
3992
"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come to
me?..."
3993
"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma parole, je
n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.55 I did not mean anything, I was
only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his offense.
"It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."
55
"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."
3994
Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a look
of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now at her
and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
3995
CHAPTER XIV
3996
The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with the
saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to another.
I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and there was
such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want to come
out, even into the light of heaven again."
3997
Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went
out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.
3998
"You are very kind," she said to him.
3999
"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them so
well and have the greatest respect for them."
4000
Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
4001
"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as of a
brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added hurriedly, not
giving him time to reply to her affectionate words. "I am very anxious
about him. His health was better in the winter, but last spring his
wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away for a cure. And
I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has not a character
like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our sorrows. He keeps
it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in good spirits, but that
is the effect of your visit- he is not often like that. If you could
persuade him to go abroad. He needs activity, and this quiet regular
life is very bad for him. Others don't notice it, but I see it."
4002
Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door, hearing
the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince Andrew and
Pierre also went out into the porch.
4003
"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out of,
the carriage.
4004
"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young
stranger was.
4005
The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.
4006
Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study, found
him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining that a
time would come when there would be no more wars. The old prince
disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.
4007
"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then there
will be no more war! Old women's nonsense- old women's nonsense!" he
repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on the shoulder,
and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew, evidently not
wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over the papers his
father had brought from town. The old prince went up to him and began
to talk business.
4008
"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He came
to town and wanted to invite me to dinner- I gave him a pretty
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A fine
fellow- your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says clever
things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks rubbish yet
stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps I'll come and sit
with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make friends with my
little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after Pierre, through the door.
4009
Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm was
not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his family
and with the household. With the stern old prince and the gentle, timid
Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre at once felt
like an old friend. They were all fond of him already. Not only
Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the pilgrims,
gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old "Prince
Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and let
himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and Mademoiselle
Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he talked to the old
prince.
4010
The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.
4011
When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met together,
they began to express their opinions of him as people always do after a
new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one said anything
but what was good of him.
4012
CHAPTER XV
4013
When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time, how
close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole
regiment.
4014
On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his home
in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned uniform of
his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and saw the
picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully shouted to
his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been asleep on
his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace him, and the
officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov experienced
the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister had embraced
him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not speak. The
regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and precious as his
parents' house.
4015
When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and had
been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had gone
out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little interests
of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and bound in one
narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense of peace, of
moral support, and the same sense being at home here in his own place,
as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was none of all that
turmoil of the world at large, where he did not know his right place
and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya with whom he ought, or
ought not, to have an explanation; here was no possibility of going
there or not going there; here there were not twenty-four hours in the
day which could be spent in such a variety of ways; there was not that
innumerable crowd of people of whom not one was nearer to him or
farther from him than another; there were none of those uncertain and
undefined money relations with his father, and nothing to recall that
terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in the regiment, all was clear and
simple. The whole world was divided into two unequal parts: one, our
Pavlograd regiment; the other, all the rest. And the rest was no
concern of his. In the regiment, everything was definite: who was
lieutenant, who captain, who was a good fellow, who a bad one, and most
of all, who was a comrade. The canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay
came every four months, there was nothing to think out or decide, you
had only to do nothing that was considered bad in the Pavlograd
regiment and, when given an order, to do what was clearly, distinctly,
and definitely ordered- and all would be well.
4016
Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this
regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on
lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was all
the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for which,
in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could not
forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault by
serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a
perfectly first-rate comrade and officer- in a word, a splendid man
altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so
possible in the regiment.
4017
After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his parents
in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now resolved
to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the debt to his
parents.
4018
Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at Pultusk
and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It was
awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new campaign.
4019
The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of the
campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau and,
when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the
campaign, was attached to Platov's division.
4020
Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal
Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed immovably
for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German village.
4021
A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river broke,
and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions for the
men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no transports could
arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and deserted villages,
searching for potatoes, but found few even of these.
4022
Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled- if any
remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be taken
from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead of
taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their rations.
4023
The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but had
lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the hospitals,
death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or the
swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and
hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the
hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just showing
out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for some reason,
they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter, but they
wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with their sabers
and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as it was a noxious
plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke out among the
soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face, which the doctors
attributed to eating this root. But in spite of all this, the soldiers
of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on "Mashka's sweet root," because it
was the second week that the last of the biscuits were being doled out
at the rate of half a pound a man and the last potatoes received had
sprouted and frozen.
4024
The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the thatched
roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with tufts of
felty winter hair.
4025
Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living just
as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms, the
hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed their
horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the thatched roofs
in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the caldrons from which
they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food and their hunger. As
usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires, steamed themselves
before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked sprouting rotten
potatoes, told and listened to stories of Potemkin's and Suvorov's
campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly, or the priest's laborer
Mikolka.
4026
The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes
and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied themselves
as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money, though there
was no food), some with more innocent games, such as quoits and
skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely spoken of,
partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly because there
was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.
4027
Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they
had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's
family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him, Rostov
felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a part in
strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to expose
Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action greeted his
safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging expeditions, in a
deserted and ruined village to which he had come in search of
provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old Pole and his
daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad, hungry, too weak
to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a conveyance. Rostov
brought them to his quarters, placed them in his own lodging, and kept
them for some weeks while the old man was recovering. One of his
comrades, talking of women, began chaffing Rostov, saying that he was
more wily than any of them and that it would not be a bad thing if he
introduced to them the pretty Polish girl he had saved. Rostov took the
joke as an insult, flared up, and said such unpleasant things to the
officer that it was all Denisov could do to prevent a duel. When the
officer had gone away, Denisov, who did not himself know what Rostov's
relations with the Polish girl might be, began to upbraid him for his
quickness of temper, and Rostov replied:
4028
"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't tell you
how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."
4029
Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
4030
"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov noticed
tears in his eyes.
4031
CHAPTER XVI
4032
In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,
but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
place.
4033
They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth hut,
dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and turf. The
hut was made in the following manner, which had then come into vogue. A
trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet eight inches deep,
and eight feet long. At one end of the trench, steps were cut out and
these formed the entrance and vestibule. The trench itself was the
room, in which the lucky ones, such as the squadron commander, had a
board, lying on piles at the end opposite the entrance, to serve as a
table. On each side of the trench, the earth was cut out to a breadth
of about two and a half feet, and this did duty for bedsteads and
couches. The roof was so constructed that one could stand up in the
middle of the trench and could even sit up on the beds if one drew
close to the table. Denisov, who was living luxuriously because the
soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a board in the roof at the
farther end, with a piece of (broken but mended) glass in it for a
window. When it was very cold, embers from the soldiers' campfire were
placed on a bent sheet of iron on the steps in the "reception room"- as
Denisov called that part of the hut- and it was then so warm that the
officers, of whom there were always some with Denisov and Rostov, sat
in their shirt sleeves.
4034
In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers, changed
his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got warm,
then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner, and, his
face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on but his
shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his head. He was
pleasantly considering the probability of being promoted in a few days
for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was awaiting Denisov, who
had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a talk.
4035
Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the hut,
evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he was
speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.
4036
"I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov was
shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some fwom
the fields."
4037
"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they don't
obey," answered the quartermaster.
4038
Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let him
fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down- capitally!" He
could hear that Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's- was
talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying something
about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when he had gone
out for provisions.
4039
Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
"Saddle! Second platoon!"
4040
"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.
4041
Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy boots
on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things about, took
his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again. In answer to
Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered vaguely and crossly
that he had some business.
4042
"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov going
out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing through the
mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had gone. Having
got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not leave the hut till
toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The weather had cleared
up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet were playing svayka,
laughing as they threw their missiles which buried themselves in the
soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle of the game, the officers
saw some wagons approaching with fifteen hussars on their skinny horses
behind them. The wagons escorted by the hussars drew up to the picket
ropes and a crowd of hussars surrounded them.
4043
"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are the
provisions."
4044
"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"
4045
A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two infantry
officers with whom he was talking.
4046
Rostov went to meet them.
4047
"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man, evidently
very angry, was saying.
4048
"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.
4049
"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing the transport
of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two days."
4050
"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.
4051
"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry officer,
raising his voice.
4052
"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing
his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not
buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the
officers.
4053
"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not riding
away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."
4054
"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and
Denisov turned his horse on the officer.
4055
"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and
turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
4056
"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.
4057
"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said. "After
all, can't let our men starve."
4058
The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport was
unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.
4059
The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and holding his
fingers spread out before his eyes said:
4060
"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and won't
begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff and
settle the business there in the commissariat department and if
possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not, as
the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a row
and the affair may end badly."
4061
From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the staff
with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he came
back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen him in.
Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov asked what
was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and threats in a
hoarse, feeble voice.
4062
Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should
undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.
4063
"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but I'll
always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'... Ice..." he
muttered.
4064
The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely necessary
to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken from his hairy
arm and only then was he able to relate what had happened to him.
4065
"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden twenty
miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait. Announce me.'
Vewy well, so out comes their head chief- also took it into his head to
lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'- 'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is not done by man who
seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him who takes them to
fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then
he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the commissioner, but your affair
will be passed on to headquarters.' I go to the commissioner. I enter,
and at the table... who do you think? No, but wait a bit!... Who is it
that's starving us?" shouted Denisov, hitting the table with the fist
of his newly bled arm so violently that the table nearly broke down and
the tumblers on it jumped about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's
starving us to death! Is it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat,
stwaight on his snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted
fwashing him... Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried
Denisov, gleeful and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache.
"I'd have killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"
4066
"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've
set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."
4067
Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke calm and
cheerful.
4068
But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully showed
them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental commander
in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence. The adjutant
told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad turn: that a
court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the severity with
which marauding and insubordination were now regarded, degradation to
the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.
4069
The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the chief
quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,
threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the
office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm of
one of them.
4070
In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing, that
he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed up in it,
but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not in the least
fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels dared attack him
he would give them an answer that they would not easily forget.
4071
Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew him
too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart he
feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
4072
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered to
hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before the
staff of his division to explain his violence at the commissariat
office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two Cossack
regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his wont, rode
out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A bullet fired by a
French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of his leg. Perhaps at
another time Denisov would not have left the regiment for so slight a
wound, but now he took advantage of it to excuse himself from appearing
at the staff and went into hospital.
4073
CHAPTER XVII
4074
In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the Pavlograds did
not take part, and after that an armistice was proclaimed. Rostov, who
felt his friend's absence very much, having no news of him since he
left and feeling very anxious about his wound and the progress of his
affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get leave to visit Denisov
in hospital.
4075
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice
devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when it
is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a
particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its
foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken soldiers
wandering about.
4076
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window frames and
panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a wooden
fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged soldiers, with
pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in the sunshine in
the yard.
4077
Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian assistant.
4078
"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to Makar
Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."
4079
The assistant asked some further questions.
4080
"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
Rostov coming upstairs.
4081
"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The
bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a
pesthouse, sir."
4082
"How so?" asked Rostov.
4083
"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."
4084
Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,
who was wounded.
4085
"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in charge
of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's well that
the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of coffee and some
lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed. "Four hundred, sir,
and they're always sending me fresh ones. There are four hundred? Eh?"
he asked, turning to the assistant.
4086
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and impatient
for the talkative doctor to go.
4087
"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."
4088
"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
indifference.
4089
The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.
4090
"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.
4091
Rostov described Denisov's appearance.
4092
"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one is
dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list. Have you
got it, Makeev?"
4093
"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if you'll
step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he added,
turning to Rostov.
4094
"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
stay here yourself."
4095
But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the assistant
to show him the way.
4096
"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.
4097
Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell was so
strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and collect his
strength before he could go on. A door opened to the right, and an
emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in underclothing, limped
out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked with glittering envious
eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at the door, Rostov saw
that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor on straw and
overcoats.
4098
"May I go in and look?"
4099
"What is there to see?" said the assistant.
4100
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had
already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It
was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where
it originated.
4101
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large windows,
the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to the walls, and
leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were unconscious and paid
no attention to the newcomers. Those who were conscious raised
themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all looked intently
at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief, reproach, and
envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of the room and
looking through the open doors into the two adjoining rooms saw the
same thing there. He stood still, looking silently around. He had not
at all expected such a sight. Just before him, almost across the middle
of the passage on the bare floor, lay a sick man, probably a Cossack to
judge by the cut of his hair. The man lay on his back, his huge arms
and legs outstretched. His face was purple, his eyes were rolled back
so that only the whites were seen, and on his bare legs and arms which
were still red, the veins stood out like cords. He was knocking the
back of his head against the floor, hoarsely uttering some word which
he kept repeating. Rostov listened and made out the word. It was
"drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov glanced round, looking for someone who
would put this man back in his place and bring him water.
4102
"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.
4103
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from the
next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.
4104
"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
4105
"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov, pointing
to the Cossack.
4106
"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
move.
4107
"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov, lowering his
eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an intense look fixed
on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the corner, on an
overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier as thin as a
skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently fixed on Rostov.
The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to him, pointing at
Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to speak to him. He drew
nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg bent under him, the
other had been amputated above the knee. His neighbor on the other
side, who lay motionless some distance from him with his head thrown
back, was a young soldier with a snub nose. His pale waxen face was
still freckled and his eyes were rolled back. Rostov looked at the
young soldier and a cold chill ran down his back.
4108
"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.
4109
"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier, his jaw
quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men, not
dogs."
4110
"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken away at
once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."
4111
"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes and
shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of reproachful
envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the room.
4112
CHAPTER XVIII
4113
Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the officers'
wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood open. There
were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers were lying
or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in hospital
dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the officers' ward was a
thin little man with one arm, who was walking about the first room in a
nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with a pipe between his teeth.
Rostov looked at him, trying to remember where he had seen him before.
4114
"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,
don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had
a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the
empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich
Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.
"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence came
sounds of several laughing voices.
4115
"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov, still
aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong in the
soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those envious
looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face of that
young soldier with eyes rolled back.
4116
Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket, though
it was nearly noon.
4117
"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in the
same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under this
habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling showed
itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the intonations of his
voice.
4118
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six weeks
after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as the
faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that struck
Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to see him,
and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the regiment, nor
about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov spoke of these
matters did not listen.
4119
Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of the
regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was
only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced from
under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission and the
rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he began
reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the stinging
rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions, who had
gathered round Rostov- a fresh arrival from the world outside-
gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his
answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the
man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his bed,
gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin still
listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of the
reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.
4120
"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."
4121
"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like an
expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber I
would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging wobbers to
book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've served the Tsar
and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I to be
degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is what I say:
'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"
4122
"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the point,
Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to submit, and
Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told you it was a
bad business.
4123
"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.
4124
"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and you
ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
better opportunity."
4125
"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him, went
on reading his paper.
4126
Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he instinctively
felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other officers was the
safest, and though he would have been glad to be of service to Denisov.
He knew his stubborn will and straightforward hasty temper.
4127
When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than an
hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the day
in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades, who
had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.
4128
Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked Denisov
whether he had no commission for him.
4129
"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where he
had an inkpot, and sat down to write.
4130
"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he said,
coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it was
the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which Denisov,
without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat officials, simply
asked for pardon.
4131
"Hand it in. It seems..."
4132
He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.
4133
CHAPTER XIX
4134
Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state of
Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the
Emperor.
4135
On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom he
was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the stay
at Tilsit.
4136
"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.
4137
"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.
4138
Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that he was
being tested.
4139
"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.
4140
"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.
4141
Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw Napoleon
pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the river, saw the
pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in silence in a tavern
on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's arrival, saw both
Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon- reaching the raft first-
stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and held out his hand to him,
and how they both retired into the pavilion. Since he had begun to move
in the highest circles Boris had made it his habit to watch attentively
all that went on around him and to note it down. At the time of the
meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of those who had come with
Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and listened attentively to
words spoken by important personages. At the moment the Emperors went
into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and did not forget to look at
it again when Alexander came out. The interview had lasted an hour and
fifty-three minutes. He noted this down that same evening, among other
facts he felt to be of historic importance. As the Emperor's suite was
a very small one, it was a matter of great importance, for a man who
valued his success in the service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of
this interview between the two Emperors, and having succeeded in this,
Boris felt that henceforth his position was fully assured. He had not
only become known, but people had grown accustomed to him and accepted
him. Twice he had executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that
the latter knew his face, and all those at court, far from
cold-shouldering him as at first when they considered him a newcomer,
would now have been surprised had he been absent.
4142
Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond
of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
lunching with him and Boris.
4143
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski arranged a
supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an aide-de-camp
of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of the Guard,
and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old aristocratic French
family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the darkness to avoid being
recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit and went to the lodging
occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.
4144
Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far from
having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and the
French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that had taken
place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte and the
French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger, contempt,
and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's Cossack officers,
Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken prisoner he would be
treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal. Quite lately, happening
to meet a wounded French colonel on the road, Rostov had maintained
with heat that peace was impossible between a legitimate sovereign and
the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov was therefore unpleasantly struck by the
presence of French officers in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he
had been accustomed to see from quite a different point of view from
the outposts of the flank. As soon as he noticed a French officer, who
thrust his head out of the door, that warlike feeling of hostility
which he always experienced at the sight of the enemy suddenly seized
him. He stopped at the threshold and asked in Russian whether
Drubetskoy lived there. Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom,
came out to meet him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a
moment on his face on first recognizing Rostov.
4145
"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
impulse.
4146
"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
business," he said coldly.
4147
"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment. Dans
un moment je suis a vous,"56 he said, answering someone who
called him.
56
"In a minute I shall be at your disposal."
4148
"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.
4149
The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face: having
evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly took both
Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes, looking
serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by something, as
if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it seemed to
Rostov.
4150
"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris, and
he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and introduced
him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian, but an hussar
officer, and an old friend of his.
4151
"Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.," said he, naming
his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
reluctantly, and remained silent.
4152
Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the
same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with which
he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the
Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,
addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter had
probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
4153
"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.
4154
Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look of
dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a bad
humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion and
that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he
alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The
looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he sitting
here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.
4155
"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk over
my business and I'll go away."
4156
"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and lie
down in my room and have a rest."
4157
"Yes, really..."
4158
They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in
some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor on
Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he and
Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not look
Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one leg
crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the
report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight into
Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this happened Rostov
felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.
4159
"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe in
such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in general,
I think..."
4160
"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.
4161
Boris smiled.
4162
"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."
4163
At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.
4164
"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.
4165
CHAPTER XX
4166
Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,
and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the
Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of
the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening, given
by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk battalion. The
Emperors were to be present at that banquet.
4167
Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when the
latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and early
next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian clothes and a
round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the French and their
uniforms and at the streets and houses where the Russian and French
Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables being set up and
preparations made for the dinner; he saw the Russian and French colors
draped from side to side of the streets, with hugh monograms A and N.
In the windows of the houses also flags and bunting were displayed.
4168
"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not
without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is here!"
thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house where
Alexander lodged.
4169
Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.
4170
"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to hand
the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really arrest
me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand on whose
side justice lies. He understands everything, knows everything. Who can
be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even if they did arrest me
for being here, what would it matter?" thought he, looking at an
officer who was entering the house the Emperor occupied. "After all,
people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go in and hand the letter
to the Emperor myself so much the worse for Drubetskoy who drives me to
it!" And suddenly with a determination he himself did not expect,
Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket and went straight to the
house.
4171
"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious of
the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall at his
feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will even
thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice is
the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying. And
passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the
porch of the Emperor's house.
4172
A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right he
saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading to
the lower floor.
4173
"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.
4174
"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas, with
a tremor in his voice.
4175
"A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty" (he was
shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."
4176
On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he
was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run away,
but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and Rostov
entered.
4177
A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high boots and
a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on, standing in
that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of his breeches a
new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that, for some reason,
attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was speaking to someone in
the adjoining room.
4178
"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.
4179
"What is it? A petition?"
4180
"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.
4181
"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.
4182
"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."
4183
"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."
4184
Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
him.
4185
"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"
4186
"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.
4187
"Are you an officer?"
4188
"Lieutenant Count Rostov."
4189
"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed
him.
4190
Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there were
many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to pass.
4191
Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.
4192
"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep voice.
4193
It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special favor
during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the division in
which Rostov was serving.
4194
Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the kindly,
jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an excited voice
told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for Denisov, whom
the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the general shook his
head gravely.
4195
"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."
4196
Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were heard
on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the porch. The
gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and went to their
horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at Austerlitz, led up the
Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a footstep Rostov knew at once
was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the danger of being recognized,
Rostov went close to the porch, together with some inquisitive
civilians, and again, after two years, saw those features he adored:
that same face and same look and step, and the same union of majesty
and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm and love for his
sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its old force. In the
uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment- white chamois-leather breeches
and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did not know (it was that of
the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out into the porch, putting on
his gloves and carrying his hat under his arm. He stopped and looked
about him, brightening everything around by his glance. He spoke a few
words to some of the generals, and, recognizing the former commander of
Rostov's division, smiled and beckoned to him.
4197
All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for some
time to the Emperor.
4198
The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his horse.
Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers (among whom
was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside his horse,
with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the cavalry general
and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be heard by all:
4199
"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than
I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
4200
The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,
Rostov ran after him with the crowd.
4201
CHAPTER XXI
4202
The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a battalion
of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a battalion of the
French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.
4203
As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which presented
arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the opposite flank, and
at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It could be no one
else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue uniform open
over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his shoulder. He was
riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse with a crimson
gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching Alexander he raised his
hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his cavalryman's eye, could not
help noticing that Napoleon did not sit well or firmly in the saddle.
The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and "Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said
something to Alexander, and both Emperors dismounted and took each
other's hands. Napoleon's face wore an unpleasant and artificial smile.
Alexander was saying something affable to him.
4204
In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which were
pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease
with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday
matter to him.
4205
Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites, approached
the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came straight up to
the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly found itself so close
to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the front row, was afraid he
might be recognized.
4206
"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
every letter.
4207
This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to
him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.
4208
"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war," added
Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and assurance
exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian ranks drawn up
before him, who all presented arms with their eyes fixed on their
Emperor.
4209
"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said Alexander and
took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the commander of the
battalion.
4210
Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
rushed forward and picked it up.
4211
"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked Koslovski, in
Russian in a low voice.
4212
"To whomever Your Majesty commands."
4213
The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing back,
remarked:
4214
"But we must give him an answer."
4215
Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
scrutiny.
4216
"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.
4217
"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the first
soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
4218
"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who did
not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look at his
colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to soldiers
called before the ranks.
4219
Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
something from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had seen
the previous evening at Boris'- ran forward and, bowing respectfully
over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a moment, laid in
it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without looking, pressed two
fingers together and the badge was between them. Then he approached
Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently gazed at his own
monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to imply that what he
was now doing was done for the sake of his ally, and the small white
hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's buttons. It was as if
Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his hand to deign to touch
that soldier's breast for the soldier to be forever happy, rewarded,
and distinguished from everyone else in the world. Napoleon merely laid
the cross on Lazarev's breast and, dropping his hand, turned toward
Alexander as though sure that the cross would adhere there. And it
really did.
4220
Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross and
fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little man
with white hands who was doing something to him and, still standing
motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into Alexander's
eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go away, or do
something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for some time in
that rigid position.
4221
The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the
tables prepared for them.
4222
Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers embraced
him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of officers and
civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of Russian and French
voices and laughter filled the air round the tables in the square. Two
officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and happy, passed by
Rostov.
4223
"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them was
saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"
4224
"I have."
4225
"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."
4226
"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension for
life."
4227
"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a shaggy
French cap.
4228
"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"
4229
"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He must
respond in kind."
4230
Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner of a
house.
4231
"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could not
refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
troubled was Rostov's face.
4232
"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.
4233
"You'll call round?"
4234
"Yes, I will."
4235
Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from a
distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on which
he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in his soul.
Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his submission,
and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and its dirt and
disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of dead flesh
that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next he thought
of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white hand, who was
now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then why those
severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he thought of
Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He caught himself
harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.
4236
The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like himself,
had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in getting a
dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The conversation
naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his comrades, like most of
the army, were dissatisfied with the peace concluded after the battle
of Friedland. They said that had we held out a little longer Napoleon
would have been done for, as his troops had neither provisions nor
ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly the latter) in silence. He
finished a couple of bottles of wine by himself. The process in his
mind went on tormenting him without reaching a conclusion. He feared to
give way to his thoughts, yet could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on
one of the officers' saying that it was humiliating to look at the
French, Rostov began shouting with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore
much to the surprise of the officers:
4237
"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly rushing
to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What right have
we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or his actions!"
4238
"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
on the supposition that he was drunk.
4239
But Rostov did not listen to him.
4240
"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more," he
went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished, it
means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the
Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an
alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If once
we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred will be
left! That way we shall be saying there is no God- nothing!" shouted
Nicholas, banging the table- very little to the point as it seemed to
his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own thoughts.
4241
"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
all...." said he.
4242
"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.
4243
"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another bottle!"
he shouted.
4244
In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview with
the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg there was
much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.
4245
CHAPTER XXII
4246
In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon
and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our old
enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and in
court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and one of
Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations of
foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time
keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken in
all the departments of government.
4247
Life meanwhile- real life, with its essential interests of health and
sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought,
science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions- went on
as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or
enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all the schemes of
reconstruction.
4248
BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
4249
CHAPTER I
4250
Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.
4251
All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished- were carried
out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible
difficulty.
4252
He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre lacked,
and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.
4253
On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and became
free agricultural laborers- this being one of the first examples of the
kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory labor was
commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for Bogucharovo
at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and writing to
the children of the peasants and household serfs.
4254
Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father and his
son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he spent in
"Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince Andrew's estate.
Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed
to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many
books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had
visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged
behind himself- who never left the country- in knowledge of what was
happening in home and foreign affairs.
4255
Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great variety of
books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a critical of survey
our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with drawing up a proposal for
a reform of the army rules and regulations.
4256
In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which had
been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.
4257
Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the new
grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of white
spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not thinking
of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from side to
side.
4258
They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year before.
They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and green
fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near the bridge,
uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past strips of
stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there, and into a
birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the forest it was
almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with their sticky green
leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers and the first blades
of green grass were pushing up and lifting last year's leaves. The
coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees scattered here and there
among the birches was an unpleasant reminder of winter. On entering the
forest the horses began to snort and sweated visibly.
4259
Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter
assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for
Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.
4260
"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful smile.
4261
"What?"
4262
"It's pleasant, your excellency!"
4263
"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the spring, I
suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really everything is
green already.... How early! The birches and cherry and alders too are
coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!"
4264
At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the
birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and twice as
tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a
man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its branches had been
broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling
unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and fingers, it stood an aged,
stern, and scornful monster among the smiling birch trees. Only the
dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about in the forest, and this oak,
refused to yield to the charm of spring or notice either the spring or
the sunshine.
4265
"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not weary
of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always the same
and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness! Look at
those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too, sticking out my
broken and barked fingers just where they have grown, whether from my
back or my sides: as they have grown so I stand, and I do not believe
in your hopes and your lies."
4266
As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times to
look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling, rigid,
misshapen, and grim as ever.
4267
"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince Andrew.
"Let others- the young- yield afresh to that fraud, but we know life,
our life is finished!"
4268
A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully pleasant,
rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this journey he,
as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at his old
conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for him to
begin anything anew- but that he must live out his life, content to do
no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring anything.
4269
CHAPTER II
4270
Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the district
in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of which he was
trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the middle of May
Prince Andrew went to visit him.
4271
It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already clothed in
green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water one longed to
bathe.
4272
Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about which
he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the
grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish cries
behind some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to cross
the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran a
dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz dress,
with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose locks of
hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing that he was a
stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.
4273
Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so
beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that slim
pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and was
contented and cheerful in her own separate- probably foolish- but
bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she thinking
of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement of the Ryazan
serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so happy?" Prince
Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
4274
In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done in
former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province with
hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his staying
the night.
4275
During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by his
elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old
count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),
Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among the
younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What is
she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"
4276
That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to sleep. He
read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It was hot in
the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He was cross with
the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had made him stay by
assuring him that some necessary documents had not yet arrived from
town, and he was vexed with himself for having stayed.
4277
He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened the
shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for this, burst
into the room. He opened the casement. The night was fresh, bright, and
very still. Just before the window was a row of pollard trees, looking
black on one side and with a silvery light on the other. Beneath the
trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy vegetation with silver-lit
leaves and stems here and there. Farther back beyond the dark trees a
roof glittered with dew, to the right was a leafy tree with brilliantly
white trunk and branches, and above it shone the moon, nearly at its
full, in a pale, almost starless, spring sky. Prince Andrew leaned his
elbows on the window ledge and his eyes rested on that sky.
4278
His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were also
awake. He heard female voices overhead.
4279
"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
recognized at once.
4280
"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.
4281
"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last time."
4282
Two girlish voices sang a musical passage- the end of some song.
4283
"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."
4284
"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming nearer to
the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the rustle of her
dress and even her breathing could be heard. Everything was
stone-still, like the moon and its light and the shadows. Prince
Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his unintentional
presence.
4285
"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never
was such a lovely night before!"
4286
Sonya made some reluctant reply.
4287
"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come here....
Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like sitting
down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this, straining
tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."
4288
"Take care, you'll fall out."
4289
He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice: "It's
past one o'clock."
4290
"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"
4291
Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.
4292
"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed
then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.
4293
"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while he
listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that she
might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it were on
purpose," thought he.
4294
In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of youthful
thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his life, that
unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down and fell asleep
at once.
4295
CHAPTER III
4296
Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.
4297
It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he
drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so
strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the harness
bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks before, for
now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs dotted about in
the forest did not jar on the general beauty but, lending themselves to
the mood around, were delicately green with fluffy young shoots.
4298
The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but only a
small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling the road
and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in the
shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and
scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the
nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now far
away.
4299
"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the left
side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with admiration
at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading
out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly
trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor
old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now.
Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs,
leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran
could have produced.
4300
"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal. All
the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz
with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face, Pierre at the
ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night
itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly to his mind.
4301
"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have in
me- everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to
fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not
be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so
that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in
harmony!"
4302
On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that autumn
and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole serics of
sensible and logical considerations showing it to be essential for him
to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the service, kept springing
up in his mind. He could not now understand how he could ever even have
doubted the necessity of taking an active share in life, just as a
month before he had not understood how the idea of leaving the quiet
country could ever enter his head. It now seemed clear to him that all
his experience of life must be senselessly wasted unless he applied it
to some kind of work and again played an active part in life. He did
not even remember how formerly, on the strength of similar wretched
logical arguments, it had seemed obvious that he would be degrading
himself if he now, after the lessons he had had in life, allowed
himself to believe in the possibility of being useful and in the
possibility of happiness or love. Now reason suggested quite the
opposite. After that journey to Ryazan he found the country dull; his
former pursuits no longer interested him, and often when sitting alone
in his study he got up, went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at
his own face. Then he would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise,
who with hair curled a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out
of the gilt frame. She did not now say those former terrible words to
him, but looked simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince
Andrew, crossing his arms behind him, long paced the room, now
frowning, now smiling, as he reflected on those irrational,
inexpressible thoughts, secret as a crime, which altered his whole life
and were connected with Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window,
the oak, and woman's beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room
at such moments he was particularly cold, stern, and above all
unpleasantly logical.
4303
"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say, "little
Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."
4304
"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly to
his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he must
wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That is what
follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child who needs
fresh air should remain at home," he would add with extreme logic, as
if punishing someone for those secret illogical emotions that stirred
within him.
4305
At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work dries
men up.
4306
CHAPTER IV
4307
Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That same
August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his leg, and
remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every day and no
one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being prepared that
so agitated society- abolishing court ranks and introducing
examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate Assessor and State
Councilor- and not merely these but a whole state constitution,
intended to change the existing order of government in Russia: legal,
administrative, and financial, from the Council of State down to the
district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams with which the
Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he had tried to
put into effect with the aid of his associates, Czartoryski,
Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov- whom he himself in jest had
called his Comite de salut public- were taking shape and being
realized.
4308
Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side, and
Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew, as a
gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levee.
The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with a single
word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he was
antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his face and
personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance the Emperor
gave him, he now found further confirmation of this surmise. The
courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His Majesty's
displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.
4309
"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and antipathies,"
thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present my proposal for
the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor personally, but the
project will speak for itself."
4310
He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend of
his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few days
later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see the
Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.
4311
On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
room at nine in the morning.
4312
He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he
had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
4313
"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been commissioned
to consider my project, so he alone can get it adopted," thought Prince
Andrew as he waited among a number of important and unimportant people
in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.
4314
During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen the
anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such rooms
were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a special
character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting their turn for
an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the faces of those of
higher rank expressed a common feeling of awkwardness, covered by a
mask of unconcern and ridicule of themselves, their situation, and the
person for whom they were waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and
down, others whispered and laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname
"Sila Andreevich" and the words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in
reference to Count Arakcheev. One general (an important personage),
evidently feeling offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and
uncrossing his legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
4315
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all faces-
that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the adjutant on
duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look and was told
that his turn would come in due course. After some others had been
shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on duty, an
officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and frightened air
was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's audience lasted a
long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a harsh voice was heard
from the other side of the door, and the officer- with pale face and
trembling lips- came out and passed through the waiting room, clutching
his head.
4316
After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer on
duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."
4317
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man of
forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep wrinkles,
scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an overhanging red
nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without looking at him.
4318
"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.
4319
"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew
quietly.
4320
Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.
4321
"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"
4322
"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."
4323
"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted
Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then- again
without looking at Prince Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of
grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are
many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."
4324
"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your excellency
how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have presented," said
Prince Andrew politely.
4325
"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to the
committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and taking a
paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to Prince
Andrew.
4326
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the
Articles of War needlessly deviating."
4327
"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired Prince
Andrew.
4328
"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that your
honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."
4329
Prince Andrew smiled.
4330
"I don't want one."
4331
"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the honor... Eh!
Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing to Prince
Andrew.
4332
CHAPTER V
4333
While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the committee
Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances, particularly those he
knew to be in power and whose aid he might need. In Petersburg he now
experienced the same feeling he had had on the eve of a battle, when
troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly attracted to the ruling
circles where the future, on which the fate of millions depended, was
being shaped. From the irritation of the older men, the curiosity of
the uninitiated. the reserve of the initiated, the hurry and
preoccupation of everyone, and the innumerable committees and
commissions of whose existence he learned every day, he felt that now,
in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast civil conflict was in preparation,
the commander in chief of which was a mysterious person he did not
know, but who was supposed to be a man of genius- Speranski. And this
movement of reconstruction of which Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and
Speranski its chief promoter, began to interest him so keenly that the
question of the army regulations quickly receded to a secondary place
in his consciousness.
4334
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception in the
highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The reforming
party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place because he
was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly because by
liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of being a liberal.
The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured the innovations,
turned to him expecting his sympathy in their disapproval of the
reforms, simply because he was the son of his father. The feminine
society world welcomed him gladly, because he was rich, distinguished,
a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a halo of romance on account
of his supposed death and the tragic loss of his wife. Besides this the
general opinion of all who had known him previously was that he had
greatly improved during these last five years, having softened and
grown more manly, lost his former affectation, pride, and contemptuous
irony, and acquired the serenity that comes with years. People talked
about him, were interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
4335
The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew spent
the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his interview
with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that nickname with
the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the Minister of War's
anteroom).
4336
"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael Mikhaylovich
Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He has promised to
come this evening."
4337
"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
Andrew.
4338
Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
simplicity.
4339
"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey continued,
"and about your freed plowmen."
4340
"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old man of
Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.
4341
"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old
man uselessly.
4342
"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.
4343
"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow
the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult
to rule.... Just the same as now- I ask you, Count- who will be heads
of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"
4344
"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,
crossing his legs and glancing round.
4345
"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"
4346
"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general, but..."
4347
Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the arm,
and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a large
open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness, who
was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with a
cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It was
Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a throb
within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it was from
respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know. Speranski's whole
figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily recognizable. In the
society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never seen anyone who
together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed such calmness and
self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet gentle an expression
as that in those half-closed, rather humid eyes, or so firm a smile
that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such a refined, smooth, soft
voice; above all he had never seen such delicate whiteness of face or
hands- hands which were broad, but very plump, soft, and white. Such
whiteness and softness Prince Andrew had only seen on the faces of
soldiers who had been long in hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary
of State, reporter to the Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he
had more than once met and talked with Napoleon.
4348
Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as people
involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no hurry to
speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be listened to,
and he looked only at the person with whom he was conversing.
4349
Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who
judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-
especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation- expected
to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.
4350
Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come sooner
as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that the Emperor
had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation of modesty.
When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly turned his
eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at him in
silence.
4351
"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has," he said after a pause.
4352
Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.
4353
"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to
co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."
4354
A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.
4355
Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every
movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant
divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those
plump white hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or
disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.
4356
Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski rose
and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of the
room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest himself in
Bolkonski.
4357
"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile that
he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the people with
whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince Andrew. "I have
known of you for a long time: first from your action with regard to
your serfs, a first example, of which it is very desirable that there
should be more imitators; and secondly because you are one of those
gentlemen of the chamber who have not considered themselves offended by
the new decree concerning the ranks allotted to courtiers, which is
causing so much gossip and tittle-tattle."
4358
"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take advantage
of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."
4359
"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above our
contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely reestablishes
natural justice."
4360
"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground," returned
Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of which he
began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in everything
and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke easily and well,
he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now while talking with
Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing the famous man's
personality.
4361
"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.
4362
"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.
4363
"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.
4364
"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his idea
that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait incontestable.
Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me paraissent etre des
moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."57
57
"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.
Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means
of maintaining that sentiment."
4365
The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much improved
by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested him.
4366
"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"58 he
began, pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even
slower than in Russian but quite calmly.
58
"If you regard the question from that point of view."
4367
Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either a
negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a source of
emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which recognize it.
His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.
4368
"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one
similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not
harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class or
court privilege."
4369
"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court privileges
have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every courtier
considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."
4370
"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince," said
Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably an
argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will
4371
do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,
after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you, and
shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."
4372
Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.
4373
CHAPTER VI
4374
During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew felt the
whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of seclusion quite
overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed him in that city.
4375
On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook four
or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The
mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time
everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did
nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked, and
talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.
4376
He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the same
remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy for
whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was thinking
of nothing.
4377
As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski produced
a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when he received
him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long and
confidentially.
4378
To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant
creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that
perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in
Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous
man. Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed
the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered
his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and
logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he
did not quite understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he
appreciated the other's capacity or because he considered it necessary
to win him to his side, showed off his dispassionate calm
reasonableness before Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle
flattery which goes hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a
tacit assumption that one's companion is the only man besides oneself
capable of understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the
reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.
4379
During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski more
than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the common
level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the wolves to
be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot understand
this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you and I,
understand what they are and who we are."
4380
This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in Prince
Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first
meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast
intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power, which
he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince Andrew's eyes
Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to be- one who
explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered important only
what was rational, and was capable of applying the standard of reason
to everything. Everything seemed so simple and clear in Speranski's
exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily agreed with him about
everything. If he replied and argued, it was only because he wished to
maintain his independence and not submit to Speranski's opinions
entirely. Everything was right and everything was as it should be: only
one thing disconcerted Prince Andrew. This was Speranski's cold,
mirrorlike look, which did not allow one to penetrate to his soul, and
his delicate white hands, which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as
one does watch the hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike
gaze and those delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why.
He was unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others
that he observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of
argument he used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of
mental device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to
Prince Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position
of a practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and
laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or
suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one
he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and
thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
descend to the level of the original discussion.
4381
In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince
Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and
authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur
to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is
after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had never
felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And it was
just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly attracted
Prince Andrew.
4382
During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt
for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village priest,
and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his
humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish
his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to strengthen it.
4383
On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and fifty
years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that Rosenkampf
had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the different
codes.
4384
"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent," said he.
"We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have no laws.
That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to serve in these
times!"
4385
Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in jurisprudence was
needed which he did not possess.
4386
"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious
circle from which we must break a way out."
4387
A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
Regulations and- what he had not at all expected- was chairman of a
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At Speranski's
request he took the first part of the Civil Code that was being drawn
up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the Institutes of
Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on Personal Rights.
4388
CHAPTER VII
4389
Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to
Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found himself
in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He arranged
dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members, and busied
himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic charters. He
gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented as far as he
could the collection of alms, in regard to which the majority of
members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost singlehanded a
poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.
4390
His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations and
dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he considered
it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations of the
bachelor circles in which he moved.
4391
Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre at
the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to rest
upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under him.
At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under him the
closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had joined
the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who confidently
steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his foot down it
sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground, he put his
other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in it, and
involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.
4392
Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of late stood aside
from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost entirely in
Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew in ordinary
life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely as Brothers in
Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D., whom he knew in
society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under the Masonic aprons
and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at which they aimed in
ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and reckoning up twenty to
thirty rubles received for the most part in promises from a dozen
members, of whom half were as well able to pay as himself, Pierre
remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother promised to devote all
his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on which he tried not to
dwell arose in his soul.
4393
He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first he
put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the lodges
or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the mystical
science of the order: with questions of the threefold designation of
God, the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury, and salt- or the
meaning of the square and all the various figures of the temple of
Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to which the elder
ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought, Joseph Alexeevich
himself, but he did not share their interests. His heart was not in the
mystical aspect of Freemasonry.
4394
In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like him,
seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a
straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.
4395
In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority) who saw
nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and ceremonies, and
prized the strict performance of these forms without troubling about
their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and even the Grand
Master of the principal lodge.
4396
Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to Pierre's
observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor desire for
anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate with the
wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their connections
or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.
4397
Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing. Freemasonry,
at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him based merely on
externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry itself, but
suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path and deviated from
its original principles. And so toward the end of the year he went
abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the order.
4398
In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our Freemasons
knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov had obtained
the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been initiated into
many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade, and was bringing
back with him much that might conduce to the advantage of the Masonic
cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons all came to see him, tried
to ingratiate themselves with him, and it seemed to them all that he
was preparing something for them and concealing it.
4399
A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened, at
which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers what he
had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their order. The
meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre rose and
began his address.
4400
"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries in
the seclusion of our lodge- we must act- act! We are drowsing, but we
must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.
4401
"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by
unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power.
4402
"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over vice
and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this
world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great
endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of
today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions,
overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very far from
that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to
remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom
needs no violence.
4403
"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing
men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction-
aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and
virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our
Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to
bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to control them
without their being aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of
government holding universal sway, which should be diffused over the
whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside
which all other governments can continue in their customary course and
do everything except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is
to obtain for virtue the victory over vice. This aim was that of
Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and good and for their
own benefit to follow the example and instruction of the best and
wisest men.
4404
"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching alone
was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her with special
strength, but now we need much more powerful methods. It is now
necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in virtue a
charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate the
passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it is
therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his
passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means to
that end.
4405
"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state, each
of them again training two others and all being closely united,
everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."
4406
This speech not only made a strong impression, but created excitement
in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it dangerous
designs of Illuminism,59 met it with a coldness that surprised
Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre began
developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long since there
had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some accusing Pierre
of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that meeting he was struck for
the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a
truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even
those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own
way with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he
always wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he
himself understood it.
59
The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical
institutions.
4407
At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for the
usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.
4408
CHAPTER VIII
4409
Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For three
days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a sofa at
home receiving no one and going nowhere.
4410
It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who implored
him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and how she
wished to devote her whole life to him.
4411
At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she would
return to Petersburg from abroad.
4412
Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre respected
less than the others forced his way in to see him and, turning the
conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way of fraternal
advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his wife was wrong
and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of Freemasonry by not
forgiving the penitent.
4413
At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to him
imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a most
important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy against him
and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and in the mood he
then was, this was not even unpleasant to him. Nothing mattered to him.
Nothing in life seemed to him of much importance, and under the
influence of the depression that possessed him he valued neither his
liberty nor his resolution to punish his wife.
4414
"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to blame,"
he thought.
4415
If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife, it
was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to
take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned her
away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of
indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?
4416
Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre late
one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see Joseph
Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:
4417
Moscow, 17th November
4418
I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down what
I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has for
three years been suffering from a painful disease of the bladder. No
one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of complaint. From
morning till late at night, except when he eats his very plain food, he
is working at science. He received me graciously and made me sit down
on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of the Knights of the East
and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same manner, asking me with a
mild smile what I had learned and gained in the Prussian and Scottish
lodges. I told him everything as best I could, and told him what I had
proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of the bad reception I had
encountered, and of my rupture with the Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich,
having remained silent and thoughtful for a good while, told me his
view of the matter, which at once lit up for me my whole past and the
future path I should follow. He surprised me by asking whether I
remembered the threefold aim of the order: (1) The preservation and
study of the mystery. (2) The purification and reformation of oneself
for its reception, and (3) The improvement of the human race by
striving for such purification. Which is the principal aim of these
three? Certainly self-reformation and self-purification. Only to this
aim can we always strive independently of circumstances. But at the
same time just this aim demands the greatest efforts of us; and so, led
astray by pride, losing sight of this aim, we occupy ourselves either
with the mystery which in our impurity we are unworthy to receive, or
seek the reformation of the human race while ourselves setting an
example of baseness and profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine,
just because it is attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride.
On this ground Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole
activity, and in the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my
family affairs he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I
have told you, lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by
removing all the difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach
our aim, but on the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of
worldly cares that we can attain our three chief aims: (1)
Self-knowledge- for man can only know himself by comparison, (2)
Self-perfecting, which can only be attained by conflict, and (3) The
attainment of the chief virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of
life can show us its vanity and develop our innate love of death or of
rebirth to a new life." These words are all the more remarkable
because, in spite of his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich
is never weary of life though he loves death, for which- in spite of
the purity and loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel himself
sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the
meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the
numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not
to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only
second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the Brothers
from pride, to turn them toward the true path self-knowledge and
self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for myself personally above
all to keep a watch over myself, and to that end he gave me a notebook,
the one I am now writing in and in which I will in future note down all
my actions.
4419
Petersburg, 23rd November
4420
I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears
and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;
that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I
knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to go
on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know whose aid
and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would have told me
what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph Alexeevich's letters
and recalled my conversations with him, and deduced from it all that I
ought not to refuse a suppliant, and ought to reach a helping hand to
everyone- especially to one so closely bound to me- and that I must
bear my cross. But if I forgive her for the sake of doing right, then
let union with her have only a spiritual aim. That is what I decided,
and what I wrote to Joseph Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her
to forget the past, to forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her,
and that I had nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She
need not know how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled
on the upper floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy
feeling of regeneration.
4421
CHAPTER IX
4422
At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at court
and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each with its
own particular tone. The largest of these was the French circle of the
Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev and Caulaincourt.
In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled in Petersburg with her
husband, took a very prominent place. She was visited by the members of
the French embassy and by many belonging to that circle and noted for
their intellect and polished manners.
4423
Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the Emperors and
had brought from there these connections with the Napoleonic
notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant. Napoleon
himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her: "C'est un
superbe animal."60 Her success as a beautiful and elegant
woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer than
before. What did surprise him was that during these last two years his
wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme charmante,
aussi spirituelle que belle."61 The distinguished Prince de
Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his epigrams to
produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be received in the
Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma of intellect.
Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings, to have
something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy, and even
ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a way
Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid, sometimes
attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her evenings
and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy were
discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a conjuror
who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment. But whether
because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a salon, or
because those who were deceived found pleasure in the deception, at any
rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's reputation as a
lovely and clever woman became so firmly established that she could say
the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody would go into raptures
over every word of hers and look for a profound meaning in it of which
she herself had no conception.
60
"That's a superb animal."
61
"Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."
4424
Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He
was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no
one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general impression
of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he presented to her, as
an advantageous background to his elegant and tactful wife. Pierre
during the last two years, as a result of his continual absorption in
abstract interests and his sincere contempt for all else, had acquired
in his wife's circle, which did not interest him, that air of
unconcern, indifference, and benevolence toward all, which cannot be
acquired artificially and therefore inspires involuntary respect. He
entered his wife's drawing room as one enters a theater, was acquainted
with everybody, equally pleased to see everyone, and equally
indifferent to them all. Sometimes he joined in a conversation which
interested him and, regardless of whether any "gentlemen of the
embassy" were present or not, lispingly expressed his views, which were
sometimes not at all in accord with the accepted tone of the moment.
But the general opinion concerning the queer husband of "the most
distinguished woman in Petersburg" was so well established that no one
took his freaks seriously.
4425
Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's
return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated him
like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but
sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris
behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of
deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three
years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected him
that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition, first
by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing
himself to suspect.
4426
"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally renounced
her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has never been an
instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs of the heart"-
a statement which, though gathered from an unknown source, he believed
implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence in his wife's drawing
room (and he was almost always there) had a physical effect upon
Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed the unconsciousness and
freedom of his movements.
4427
"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like him
very much."
4428
In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather blind
and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who did
nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured fellow.
But a complex and difficult process of internal development was taking
place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him and causing
him many spiritual doubts and joys.
4429
CHAPTER X
4430
Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it during
that time:
4431
24th November
4432
Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By
Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state
and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and
dined alone- the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and
drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the
Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a funny
story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have done so
when everybody laughed loudly at it.
4433
I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me to
walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and deliberation,
(2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion, (3) to withdraw
from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the state, (b)
family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the management of my
affairs.
4434
27th November
4435
I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the
Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we
talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new
projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my
benefactor's words- that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker
for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not
called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.
visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a new
Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak and
unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the seven
pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven virtues,
the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Brother O. was
very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place. The new
decoration of the Premises contributed much to the magnificence of the
spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was admitted. I nominated him
and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling agitated me all the time I was
alone with him in the dark chamber. I caught myself harboring a feeling
of hatred toward him which I vainly tried to overcome. That is why I
should really like to save him from evil and lead him into the path of
truth, but evil thoughts of him did not leave me. It seemed to me that
his object in entering the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in
favor with members of our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked
me several times whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a
question to which I could not reply) and that according to my
observation he is incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and
is too preoccupied and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual
improvement, I had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me
insincere, and all the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple
it seemed to me that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I
wished really to stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I
could not be eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the
Brothers and to the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to
find the true path out of the labyrinth of lies!
4436
After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then the
following was written:
4437
I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name unutterable
which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen, refresh, and
support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt has no place.
The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane science and our
sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human sciences dissect
everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to examine it. In the
holy science of our order all is one, all is known in its entirety and
life. The Trinity- the three elements of matter- are sulphur, mercury,
and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and fiery nature; in combination with
salt by its fiery nature it arouses a desire in the latter by means of
which it attracts mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination
produces other bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence.
Christ, the Holy Spirit, Him!...
4438
3rd December
4439
Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went and
paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but instead my
imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago, when Dolokhov,
meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I was enjoying
perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At the time I gave
him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that meeting and in my
mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter replies. I recollected
myself and drove away that thought only when I found myself glowing
with anger, but I did not sufficiently repent. Afterwards Boris
Drubetskoy came and began relating various adventures. His coming vexed
me from the first, and I said something disagreeable to him. He
replied. I flared up and said much that was unpleasant and even rude to
him. He became silent, and I recollected myself only when it was too
late. My God, I cannot get on with him at all. The cause of this is my
egotism. I set myself above him and so become much worse than he, for
he is lenient to my rudeness while I on the contrary nourish contempt
for him. O God, grant that in his presence I may rather see my own
vileness, and behave so that he too may benefit. After dinner I fell
asleep and as I was drowsing off I clearly heard a voice saying in my
left ear, "Thy day!"
4440
I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded by
dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my left
thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it with
my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger one,
began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the bigger
and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking my arm,
led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a narrow
plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to clamber
up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After much
effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one side and my
body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A. standing on the
fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden, and in the garden
was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O Lord, great Architect
of Nature, help me to tear from myself these dogs- my passions
especially the last, which unites in itself the strength of all the
former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of virtue to a vision of
which I attained in my dream.
4441
7th December
4442
I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I
was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this could
not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace him. But
as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and grown young,
and he was quietly telling me something about the teaching of our
order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it seemed that we
all left the room and something strange happened. We were sitting or
lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I wished to show
him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was saying I began
picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and the grace of God
sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I was glad he noticed
this. But be looked at me with vexation and jumped up, breaking off his
remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he had been saying did
not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a kind look, and then we
suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where there is a double bed. He
lay down on the edge of it and I burned with longing to caress him and
lie down too. And he said, "Tell me frankly what is your chief
temptation? Do you know it? I think you know it already." Abashed by
this question, I replied that sloth was my chief temptation. He shook
his head incredulously; and even more abashed, I said that though I was
living with my wife as he advised, I was not living with her as her
husband. To this he replied that one should not deprive a wife of one's
embraces and gave me to understand that that was my duty. But I replied
that I should be ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished.
And I awoke and found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life
was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the
darkness comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked
young and bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in
which he wrote about "conjugal duties."
4443
9th December
4444
I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw that I
was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and Joseph
Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at once that
the process of regeneration had already taken place in him, and I
rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands, and he said,
"Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked at him, still
holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young, but that he
had no hair on his head and his features were quite changed. And I
said, "I should have known you had I met you by chance," and I thought
to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And suddenly I saw him lying like
a dead body; then he gradually recovered and went with me into my study
carrying a large book of sheets of drawing paper; I said, "I drew
that," and he answered by bowing his head. I opened the book, and on
all the pages there were excellent drawings. And in my dream I knew
that these drawings represented the love adventures of the soul with
its beloved. And on its pages I saw a beautiful representation of a
maiden in transparent garments and with a transparent body, flying up
to the clouds. And I seemed to know that this maiden was nothing else
than a representation of the Song of Songs. And looking at those
drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing wrong, but could not tear
myself away from them. Lord, help me! My God, if Thy forsaking me is
Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am myself the cause, teach me
what I should do! I shall perish of my debauchery if Thou utterly
desertest me!
4445
CHAPTER XI
4446
The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two years
they had spent in the country.
4447
Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was still
serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending comparatively little,
the way of life at Otradnoe- Mitenka's management of affairs, in
particular- was such that the debts inevitably increased every year.
The only resource obviously presenting itself to the old count was to
apply for an official post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for
one and also, as he said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the
last time.
4448
Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
accepted.
4449
Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they were
provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow without
inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.
4450
The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in
Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country
neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,
Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their
district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in
Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and
dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'
and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young man
pays when he intends to propose.
4451
Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air that
everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he had
obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.
4452
In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had
picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp
standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his commander.
Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this occurrence at
such length and so insistently that everyone again believed it had been
necessary to do this, and he received two decorations for the Finnish
war also. In 1809 he was a captain in the Guards, wore medals, and held
some special lucrative posts in Petersburg.
4453
Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not be
denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent terms
with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant career
before him and an assured position in society.
4454
Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a Moscow
theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had said in
German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"62 and from that moment
had made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered
the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come to
propose.
62
"That girl shall be my wife."
4455
Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an
obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess
Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good
natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it would
be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that it was
good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were seriously
embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above all, Vera was
twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though she was
certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had proposed to
her. So they gave their consent.
4456
"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if it
were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and mamma are
now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in the Baltic
Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with her fortune
and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not marrying for
money- I consider that dishonorable- but a wife should bring her share
and a husband his. I have my position in the service, she has
connections and some means. In our times that is worth something, isn't
it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable girl, and she loves
me..."
4457
Berg blushed and smiled.
4458
"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good. Now
the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite different-
an unpleasant character and has not the same intelligence. She is so...
you know?... Unpleasant... But my fiancee!... Well, you will be
coming," he was going to say, "to dine," but changed his mind and said
"to take tea with us," and quickly doubling up his tongue he blew a
small round ring of tobacco smoke, perfectly embodying his dream of
happiness.
4459
After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by Berg's
proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times took
possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and insincere.
In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain awkwardness and
constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not having loved
Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off their hands. The
old count felt this most. He would probably have been unable to state
the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from the state of his
affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what his debts
amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his daughters were
born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an estate with
three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had already been sold,
and the other was mortgaged and the interest so much in arrears that it
would have to be sold, so that it was impossible to give it to Vera.
Nor had he any money.
4460
Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained before
the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own mind the
question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At one time the
count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of selling a forest,
at another time of borrowing money on a note of hand. A few days before
the wedding Berg entered the count's study early one morning and, with
a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his future father-in-law to let
him know what Vera's dowry would be. The count was so disconcerted by
this long-foreseen inquiry that without consideration he gave the first
reply that came into his head. "I like your being businesslike about
it.... I like it. You shall be satisfied...."
4461
And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did
not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at
least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters off.
4462
"Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to marry now without
having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be acting
badly...."
4463
The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and to
avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand for
eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on the
shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was
impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty
thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he
added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand."
4464
"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for
eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."
4465
CHAPTER XII
4466
Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which
she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four
years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her
mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of
that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not
worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding
promise tormented her.
4467
Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen
the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed near
Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.
4468
Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and this
conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders spoke of
him.
4469
"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say when
Boris was mentioned.
4470
Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently, seemed
to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke rapturously
and gratefully of the merits of her son and the brilliant career on
which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to Petersburg Boris called
on them.
4471
He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was
his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of
letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between
himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He
had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with
Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to the
patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he
enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the
richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be
realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her
own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the drawing
room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.
4472
Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining from
under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had known her
four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a different
Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous astonishment. This
expression on his face pleased Natasha.
4473
"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
countess.
4474
Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
change in her.
4475
"How handsome you have grown!"
4476
"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.
4477
"And is Papa older?" she asked.
4478
Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with the
countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He felt
the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced at
her occasionally.
4479
Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were all
comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at once.
He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess, arranging
with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his left hand
like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined compression of
his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg society,
recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow acquaintances.
It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded, when speaking
of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he had attended,
and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.
4480
All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under her
brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He looked
round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he was saying.
He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and took his leave.
The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather mocking eyes still looked
at him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that Natasha
attracted him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that
feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would
mean ruin to his career, while to renew their former relations without
intending to marry her would be dishonorable. Boris made up his mind to
avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that resolution he called again a
few days later and began calling often and spending whole days at the
Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with
Natasha and tell her that the old times must be forgotten, that in
spite of everything... she could not be his wife, that he had no means,
and they would never let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt
awkward about entering on such an explanation. From day to day he
became more and more entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that
Natasha was in love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite
songs, showed him her album, making him write in it, did not allow him
to allude to the past, letting it be understood how was the present;
and every day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant
to, and not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would
all end. He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes
from her every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the
Rostovs.
4481
CHAPTER XIII
4482
One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in a
dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood dispelled- looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be that
this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing her
mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that her
mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly
slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and
jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave.
This couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller
than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank into the feather bed,
rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling up the bedclothes as she
settled down, raising her knees to her chin, kicking out and laughing
almost inaudibly, now covering herself up head and all, and now peeping
at her mother. The countess finished her prayers and came to the bed
with a stern face, but seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she
smiled in her kind, weak way.
4483
"Now then, now then!" said she.
4484
"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on your
throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round the
neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her mother
Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that however
she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without hurting her
or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.
4485
"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her
pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of times,
had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her arms, and
assumed a serious expression.
4486
These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from his
club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and daughter.
4487
"What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..."
4488
Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.
4489
"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have come
about. Don't say it- I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her hand.
"Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"
4490
"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say Boris is
nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what then?...
What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his head, I can see
that...."
4491
As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter. Natasha was
lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the mahogany
sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the countess
only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her by its
peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.
4492
Natasha was listening and considering.
4493
"Well, what then?" said she.
4494
"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him? You
know you can't marry him."
4495
"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.
4496
"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a relation...
and because you yourself don't love him."
4497
"How do you know?"
4498
"I know. It is not right, darling!"
4499
"But if I want to..." said Natasha.
4500
"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.
4501
"But if I want to..."
4502
"Natasha, I am in earnest..."
4503
Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned it
over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between the
knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February, March,
April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!" said she,
turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her daughter and in
that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she had wished to say.
4504
"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this friendship
dating from your childish days, and to see him so intimate with you may
injure you in the eyes of other young men who visit us, and above all
it torments him for nothing. He may already have found a suitable and
wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."
4505
"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.
4506
"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."
4507
"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."
4508
"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have a
talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."
4509
"Why not, if he likes to?"
4510
"Because I know it will end in nothing...."
4511
"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!" said
Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well, I
won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it." Natasha
smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just so," she
added.
4512
"How so, my pet?"
4513
"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."
4514
"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.
4515
"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little finger,
saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the other
hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think? Was
anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very, very
nice. Only not quite my taste- he is so narrow, like the dining-room
clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know- gray, light gray..."
4516
"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.
4517
Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
square."
4518
"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.
4519
"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue and
red.... How can I explain it to you?"
4520
"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers, and
ran barefoot to her own room.
4521
It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no
one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.
4522
"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little
kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's
virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know
anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how
clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of
herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise man-
the wisest and best of men- who was saying it of her. "There is
everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is unusually
intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty, uncommonly pretty, and
agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and her voice! One can really
say it's a wonderful voice!"
4523
She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw herself
on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would immediately
fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the candle, and before
Dunyasha had left the room had already passed into yet another happier
world of dreams, where everything was as light and beautiful as in
reality, and even more so because it was different.
4524
Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him, after
which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.
4525
CHAPTER XIV
4526
On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper. The
diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.
4527
The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered with
innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit entrance
which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but dozens of
police officers and even the police master himself stood at the porch.
Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving, with red-liveried
footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the carriages emerged men
wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while ladies in satin and ermine
cautiously descended the carriage steps which were let down for them
with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly and noiselessly over the
baize at the entrance.
4528
Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through the
crowd and caps were doffed.
4529
"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't you see
the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.
4530
One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone and
mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.
4531
A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who were
to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
4532
There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in the
Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive, that
the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be arranged
as it should be.
4533
Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at the
court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high society,
was to accompany them to the ball.
4534
They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were not
yet dressed.
4535
Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight that
morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all day. All
her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring that they
all- she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well dressed as
possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in her hands.
The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and the two
girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their bodices and
their hair dressed a la grecque.
4536
Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks, and
ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the openwork
silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were already on; the
hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing dressing and so was
the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about helping them all, was
behindhand. She was still sitting before a looking-glass with a
dressing jacket thrown over her slender shoulders. Sonya stood ready
dressed in the middle of the room and, pressing the head of a pin till
it hurt her dainty finger, was fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as
the pin went through it.
4537
"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha turning
her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the maid who
was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not right. Come
here!"
4538
Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.
4539
"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was
holding Natasha's hair.
4540
"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."
4541
"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.
4542
"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"
4543
"I have only my cap to pin on."
4544
"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."
4545
"But it's already ten."
4546
They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
4547
When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under
which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,
ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother. Turning
her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap and,
hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were turning
up the hem of her skirt.
4548
The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long. Two
maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer garment
up high on one uplifted hand.
4549
"Mavra, quicker, darling!"
4550
"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."
4551
"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door. "Here
is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."
4552
"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze dress
with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as if by
this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of what she
held.
4553
Natasha began putting on the dress.
4554
"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her
father as he opened the door- speaking from under the filmy skirt which
still covered her whole face.
4555
Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in. He was
wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed
and his hair pomaded.
4556
"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood in
the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
4557
"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of her
mouth to the other with her tongue.
4558
"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."
4559
Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress
was too long.
4560
"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling on her
knees after her young lady.
4561
"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in one
minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck on
the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set to
work once more.
4562
At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in her cap
and velvet gown.
4563
"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than any of
you!"
4564
He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside fearing to
be rumpled.
4565
"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange it,"
and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up her skirt
could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn off.
4566
"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"
4567
"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.
4568
"What a beauty- a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the door.
"And Sonya! They are lovely!"
4569
At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and
started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
4570
Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she had
gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less flurry- for
to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was washed,
perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed behind her
ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing room in her
yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her old lady's maid
was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs' servants had been.
4571
She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,
and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they
settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.
4572
CHAPTER XV
4573
Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not once
had time to think of what lay before her.
4574
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,
she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her there
at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms- with music, flowers,
dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of Petersburg.
The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it would come
true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness and closeness of
the carriage. She understood all that awaited her only when, after
stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she entered the hall, took
off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in front of her mother,
mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between the flowers. Only then
did she remember how she must behave at a ball, and tried to assume the
majestic air she considered indispensable for a girl on such an
occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her eyes growing misty,
she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a hundred to the minute, and
the blood throbbed at her heart. She could not assume that pose, which
would have made her ridiculous, and she moved on almost fainting from
excitement and trying with all her might to conceal it. And this was
the very attitude that became her best. Before and behind them other
visitors were entering, also talking in low tones and wearing ball
dresses. The mirrors on the landing reflected ladies in white,
pale-blue, and pink dresses, with diamonds and pearls on their bare
necks and arms.
4575
Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her reflection
from the others. All was blended into one brilliant procession. On
entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices, footsteps, and
greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter dazzled her still
more. The host and hostess, who had already been standing at the door
for half an hour repeating the same words to the various arrivals,
"Charme de vous voir,"63 greeted the Rostovs and Peronskaya in
the same manner.
63
"Delighted to see you."
4576
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her black
hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye involuntarily
rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and gave her alone
a special smile in addition to her usual smile as hostess. Looking at
her she may have recalled the golden, irrecoverable days of her own
girlhood and her own first ball. The host also followed Natasha with
his eyes and asked the count which was his daughter.
4577
"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
4578
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front rows
of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were asking
about her and looking at her. She realized that those noticing her
liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
4579
"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.
4580
Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important people
at the ball.
4581
"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man," she
said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray curly hair,
who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he said.
4582
"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She is
quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even more
run after."
4583
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very
plain daughter.
4584
"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And look,
here come her suitors."
4585
"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating a
handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head
erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's
handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl. But
your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say she
has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she
replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he
were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming. No
one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still the
most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply she is
dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the universal
Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him beside his wife
and he looks a regular buffoon!"
4586
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the crowd
and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly as if he
were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through, evidently
looking for someone.
4587
Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the buffoon,"
as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for them, and for
her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and introduce
partners to her.
4588
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome, dark
man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a window
talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at once
recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it was
Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger, happier, and
better-looking.
4589
"There's someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a night
with us at Otradnoe."
4590
"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
present la pluie et le beau temps."64 He's too proud for
anything. Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with
Speranski, writing some project or other. Just look how he treats the
ladies! There's one talking to him and he has turned away," she said,
pointing at him. "I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those
ladies."
64
"He is all the rage just now.
4591
CHAPTER XVI
4592
Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and then
back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor entered to
the sounds of music that had immediately struck up. Behind him walked
his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing to right and left as
if anxious to get the first moments of the reception over. The band
played the polonaise in vogue at that time on account of the words that
had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander, Elisaveta, all our hearts
you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on to the drawing room, the
crowd made a rush for the doors, and several persons with excited faces
hurried there and back again. Then the crowd hastily retired from the
drawing-room door, at which the Emperor reappeared talking to the
hostess. A young man, looking distraught, pounced down on the ladies,
asking them to move aside. Some ladies, with faces betraying complete
forgetfulness of all the rules of decorum, pushed forward to the
detriment of their toilets. The men began to choose partners and take
their places for the polonaise.
4593
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the music.
The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and
were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the
polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and
Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not having
been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms hanging down,
her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly, and with bated
breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight before her,
evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She was not
concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people whom
Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought: "Is it possible
no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to dance? Is it
possible that not one of all these men will notice me? They do not even
seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they were saying, 'Ah,
she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth looking at her!' No,
it's impossible," she thought. "They must know how I long to dance, how
splendidly I dance, and how they would enjoy dancing with me."
4594
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears. She
wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the other end
of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by themselves
as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of strangers, with no one
interested in them and not wanted by anyone. Prince Andrew with a lady
passed by, evidently not recognizing them. The handsome Anatole was
smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and looked at Natasha as one
looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice and each time turned away.
Berg and his wife, who were not dancing, came up to them.
4595
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if there were
nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did not
listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her own
green dress.
4596
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced with
three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The
Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had
yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went up
to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly raised her
hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him. The
aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round
her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding first
round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught
Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from
the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his
rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner's velvet dress
spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round. Natasha gazed at
them and was ready to cry because it was not she who was dancing that
first turn of the waltz.
4597
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in the
front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff was
talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State to be
held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with Speranski
and participating in the work of the legislative commission, could give
reliable information about that sitting, concerning which various
rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was saying, he
was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men intending to dance
who had not yet gathered courage to enter the circle.
4598
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's presence,
and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to dance.
4599
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
4600
"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask
her," he said.
4601
"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to the
baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere- at a ball one must
dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated. The
despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his eye. He
recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her debut,
remembered her conversation at the window, and with an expression of
pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.
4602
"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess, with
heightened color.
4603
"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
4604
"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little girl
seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as she
raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the second
couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best dancers
of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their
white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and
independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful- compared
to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands
of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl
exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed had
she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
4605
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed to
him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he disliked,
caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had chosen Natasha
because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she was the first
pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he embraced that
slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close to him and smiling
so near him than the wine of her charm rose to his head, and he felt
himself revived and rejuvenated when after leaving her he stood
breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
4606
CHAPTER XVII
4607
After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and then
the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young men,
so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous partners to
Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She noticed and saw
nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did she fail to notice
that the Emperor talked a long time with the French ambassador, and how
particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or that Prince
So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and that Helene had
great success and was honored was by the special attention of
So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only noticed that
he had gone because the ball became livelier after his departure. For
one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew was again her
partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the Otradnoe
avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight night, and
told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha blushed at
that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if there had been
something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had overheard.
4608
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked meeting
someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And such was
Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and even her
mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special care and
tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest and most
unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the middle of the
cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha, still out of
breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer chose her. She
was tired and panting and evidently thought of declining, but
immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder, smiling at Prince
Andrew.
4609
"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see how
they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love
everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was
said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the
room to choose two ladies for the figure.
4610
"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be
my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own surprise, as
he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
4611
"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew, "but
what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, that she
won't be dancing here a month before she will be married.... Such as
she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha, readjusting a rose that was
slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
4612
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to
the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and asked
his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not answer
at once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: "How
can you ask such a question?"
4613
"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes
completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of
evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
4614
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position
his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absent-minded. A
deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared
over his spectacles seeing no one.
4615
On her way to supper Natasha passed him.
4616
Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of him.
She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of her own
happiness.
4617
"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"
4618
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
4619
"Yes, I am very glad," he said.
4620
"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes all
the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so
they ought all to be happy.
4621
CHAPTER XVIII
4622
Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not dwell
on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then... "Yes, that
little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh, original,
un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That was all he
thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea he set to
work.
4623
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for work
and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work, as he
often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.
4624
The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented
all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new
ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of
those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to the
fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into Prince
Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking. He had
just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council of
State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically. The
Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such as
only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said that
the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening his
eyes significantly.
4625
"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history," he concluded.
4626
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the Council of
State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which he had attached
such importance, and was surprised that this event, now that it had
taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite insignificant.
He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic account of it. A
very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it matter to me or to
Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the Council? Can all that
make me any happier or better?"
4627
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest Prince
Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to dine that
evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the host had said
when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the intimate home
circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested Prince Andrew,
especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his domestic
surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
4628
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speranski
owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room this small
house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already assembled at
five o'clock. There were no ladies present except Speranski's little
daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The other
guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin. While still in the
anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato laugh-
a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone- it sounded like
Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never
before heard Speranski's famous laugh, and this ringing, high pitched
laughter from a statesman made a strange impression on him.
4629
He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres. Speranski, wearing a
gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still
the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of
the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance.
His guests surrounded him. Magnitski, addressing himself to Speranski,
was relating an anecdote, and Speranski was laughing in advance at what
Magnitski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
Magnitski's words were again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep
bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed
softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato
manner.
4630
Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince
Andrew.
4631
"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he went on,
turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have agreed that
this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about business!" and
turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
4632
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
4633
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.
4634
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to
consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnitski
had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate something
still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in this
company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted
that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning a deaf
dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too.
Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the
stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering, broke into the
conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed
under the former order of things- threatening to give a serious turn to
the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing Stolypin about his
vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
former lively tone.
4635
Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement
in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried
to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince
Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's high-pitched voice struck
him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a false
note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he would be a damper
on the spirits of the company, but no one took any notice of his being
out of harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very gay.
4636
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks
were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he
could not jest with them.
4637
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the
salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.
4638
After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He patted the
little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture, too,
seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
4639
The men remained at table over their port- English fashion. In the
midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish
affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish
to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
moments all were silent.
4640
Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine and,
remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair," passed it
to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly went
into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed to
Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had left the
room the general merriment stopped and the guests began to converse
sensibly and quietly with one another.
4641
"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his study.
"A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski
immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses in
French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg
people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the verses
were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his leave.
4642
"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.
4643
"I promised to go to a reception."
4644
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have
expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own activities
connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.
4645
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new.
He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his
project of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and
which they were trying to pass over in silence simply because another,
a very poor one, had already been prepared and submitted to the
Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a
member. He remembered how carefully and at what length everything
relating to form and procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how
sedulously and promptly all that related to the gist of the business
was evaded. He recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how
painstakingly he had translated the articles of the Roman and French
codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly
pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his occupations in the country, his
journey to Ryazan; he remembered the peasants and Dron the village
elder, and mentally applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided
into paragraphs, he felt astonished that he could have spent so much
time on such useless work.
4646
CHAPTER XIX
4647
Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited
before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed
acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness which
demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had
left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
4648
Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue
house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in
her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him as an old
friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly
judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple, and
kindly people. The old count's hospitality and good nature, which
struck one especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such
that Prince Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. "Yes," he
thought, "they are capital people, who of course have not the slightest
idea what a treasure they possess in Natasha; but they are kindly folk
and form the best possible setting for this strikingly poetic, charming
girl, overflowing with life!"
4649
In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered it
found in it a new enjoyment.
4650
After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the
clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking
to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased
speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had thought
impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and something new
and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad.
He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What
about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?...
His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden,
vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great
and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that
he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him
while she sang.
4651
As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how he
liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that
she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he
liked her singing as he liked everything she did.
4652
Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to bed
from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his
candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all
troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if
he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own fresh air. It did
not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha; he was not
thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in
consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive, why do
I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with all its
joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first time for a
very long while he began making happy plans for the future. He decided
that he must attend to his son's education by finding a tutor and
putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire from the service
and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. "I must use my
freedom while I feel so much strength and youth in me," he said to
himself. "Pierre was right when he said one must believe in the
possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in
it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live
and be happy!" thought he.
4653
CHAPTER XX
4654
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate
brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
4655
"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she
could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more
fortunate with you," he said with a smile.
4656
"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."
4657
"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this with
perfect conviction that this information could not but be agreeable),
"and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own and my wife's
friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished to ask the
countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to supper."
4658
Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as the
Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation.
Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small
but select company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why
though he grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he was
prepared to run into some expense for the sake of good society- that
Pierre could not refuse, and promised to come.
4659
"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten minutes
to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is coming. He
is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will do me the
favor."
4660
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the
Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
4661
Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were
really for their guests' arrival.
4662
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures
and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in
his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to her that one always
could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then
does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
4663
"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to
her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how have I
obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my aquaintances. It
goes without saying that one must be conscientious and methodical."
4664
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein.65 Vera at the same time smiling
with a sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who
all the same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.
Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,
judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,
supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited
and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
65
To be a man.
4665
Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace
fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the
lips.
4666
"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he continued,
following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
4667
"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
society."
4668
"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg, pointing to
the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
4669
Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally
claiming the honor of this visit.
4670
"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances," thought
Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."
4671
"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests," said
Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say to
different people."
4672
Berg smiled again.
4673
"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine conversation,"
said he.
4674
They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it was
impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange
that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an
armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently
painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor
to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by
moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began their
evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain
their guest.
4675
Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once began
accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation was
required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the question of
the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general subject
to personal considerations as to the proposals made him to take part in
the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them. Though
the conversation was very incoherent and Vera was angry at the
intrusion of the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with
satisfaction that, even if only one guest was present, their evening
had begun very well and was as like as two peas to every other evening
party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
4676
Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing room,
at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of dresses, and the
bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody always has it,
especially so the general, who admired the apartment, patted Berg on
the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the setting out
of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilya Rostov, who
was next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with
the old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on
which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as
the Panins had at their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere
else.
4677
CHAPTER XXI
4678
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston with
Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he
happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball, She was silent, and not
only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by
her look of gentle indifference to everything around.
4679
"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She was
sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her. After
playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking five
tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had
entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at
Natasha.
4680
"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
surprise.
4681
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a
look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up
at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And
the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had
again become what she had been at the ball.
4682
Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend's face.
4683
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with
his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six
rubbers he watched her and his friend.
4684
"Something very important is happening between them," thought Pierre,
and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and made
him neglect the game.
4685
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing
like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was talking
with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was saying something
to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking whether they
were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince
Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided that at a party, a real evening
party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were absolutely necessary
and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone, began a
conversation with him about feelings in general and about her sister.
With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she
felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
4686
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried away
by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed,
a thing that rarely happened with him.
4687
"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself), "love a
man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I
consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"
4688
"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a
sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to be
able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that the
less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be," he
added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.
4689
"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera- mentioning
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times- "in
our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted
often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that
Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about to
rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:
4690
"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but till
quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know,
Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who, between
ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..." (alluding to
a map of love much in vogue at that time).
4691
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
4692
"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.
4693
"Yes, I know him..."
4694
"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"
4695
"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing
unexpectedly.
4696
"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.66 Don't you think so?"
66
"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."
4697
"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful
with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these
jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
4698
"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.
4699
"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You know
that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic gloves given
to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he loved.) "I...
but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange light in his
eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew approached
Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andrew asked her
something and how she flushed as she replied.
4700
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
the affairs in Spain.
4701
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his
face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he had
seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the cards, the
general raising his voice at the card table, and the samovar and the
tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had always seen at the
evening parties he wished to imitate. They had not yet had a loud
conversation among the men and a dispute about something important and
clever. Now the general had begun such a discussion and so Berg drew
Pierre to it.
4702
CHAPTER XXII
4703
Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with
the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.
4704
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came, and
without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not only in
the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha, but in the
whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something important that was
bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and sternly serious eyes
at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and timidly started some
artificial conversation about trifles as soon as he looked her way.
Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid of being in the way when
she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a panic of expectation, when
she remained alone with him for a moment. Prince Andrew surprised her
by his timidity. She felt that he wanted to say something to her but
could not bring himself to do so.
4705
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"
4706
"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't talk
about that," said Natasha.
4707
But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now frightened,
lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before her. She told
her how he had complimented her, how he told her he was going abroad,
asked her where they were going to spend the summer, and then how he
had asked her about Boris.
4708
"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said. "Only
I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm with him.
What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real thing? Yes? Mamma,
are you asleep?"
4709
"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now go!"
4710
"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! Mummy!
such a thing never happened to me before," she said, surprised and
alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And could we ever
have thought!..."
4711
It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andrew
at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared
this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she
had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of
finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
4712
"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while
we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball. It
is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! Already
then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."
4713
"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..." said
her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andrew had
written in Natasha's album.
4714
"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"
4715
"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'" said her
mother.
4716
"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.
4717
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and telling him
of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her his wife.
4718
That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of late
become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies and
gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the rooms
and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and morose air.
4719
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous depression
and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the intimacy of his
wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly been made a
gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had begun to feel
oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark thoughts of the vanity
of all things human came to him oftener than before. At the same time
the feeling he had noticed between his protegee Natasha and Prince
Andrew accentuated his gloom by the contrast between his own position
and his friend's. He tried equally to avoid thinking about his wife,
and about Natasha and Prince Andrew; and again everything seemed to him
insignificant in comparison with eternity; again the question: for
what? presented itself; and he forced himself to work day and night at
Masonic labors, hoping to drive away the evil spirit that threatened
him. Toward midnight, after he had left the countess' apartments, he
was sitting upstairs in a shabby dressing gown, copying out the
original transaction of the Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in
his low room cloudy with tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was
Prince Andrew.
4720
"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air. "And
I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book with that
air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy people look at
their work.
4721
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life on
his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.
4722
"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it yesterday
and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything like it
before. I am in love, my friend!"
4723
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person down on
the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
4724
"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.
4725
"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it, but
the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why don't
you speak?"
4726
"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and beginning
to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it.... That girl is
such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend, I entreat
you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry, marry.... And I am
sure there will not be a happier man than you."
4727
"But what of her?"
4728
"She loves you."
4729
"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
Pierre's eyes.
4730
"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.
4731
"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do
you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."
4732
"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face really
changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to Prince
Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a different, quite
a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for life, his
disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he made up his mind
to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in his soul. Now he
boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future, said he could not
sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice, and spoke of how
he would either make his father consent to this marriage and love her,
or would do without his consent; then he marveled at the feeling that
had mastered him as at something strange, apart from and independent of
himself.
4733
"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling that
I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into two
halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the other
half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom and
darkness...."
4734
"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand that."
4735
"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."
4736
"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched and
sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot appeared
to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
4737
CHAPTER XXIII
4738
Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to
obtain this he started for the country next day.
4739
His father received his son's communication with external composure,
but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to
alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was
already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want to,"
thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With his son,
however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for important occasions
and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole matter.
4740
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special stress
on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son whom it would
be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly and finally," the
father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg you to put it off
for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as you wanted to for a
German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your love or passion or
obstinacy- as you please- is still as great, marry! And that's my last
word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the prince, in a tone which
showed that nothing would make him alter his decision.
4741
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his feelings, or
his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that he (the old
prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to conform to his
father's wish- to propose, and postpone the wedding for a year.
4742
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,
Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
4743
Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski all
day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the same.
Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that Prince Andrew
had gone to see his father, could not explain his absence to herself.
4744
Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out
anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and
listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in
the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed to
her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing at
her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound to her
vanity intensified her misery.
4745
Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly began
to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not know why
it is being punished.
4746
The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to her
mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:
4747
"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about it! He
just came and then left off, left off..."
4748
Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and went
on quietly:
4749
"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I have
now become quite calm, quite calm."
4750
The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which she
knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she
had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went
to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud resonance,
and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished her first
exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and sang a musical
phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though
she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating,
filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at
once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so much of it?
Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she began walking
up and down the room, not stepping simply on the resounding parquet but
treading with each step from the heel to the toe (she had on a new and
favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel
and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own
voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it. "There, that's me!" the
expression of her face seemed to say as she caught sight of herself.
"Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."
4751
A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her
walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite mood- love of, and
delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha is!" she said again,
speaking as some third, collective, male person. "Pretty, a good voice,
young, and in nobody's way if only they leave her in peace." But
however much they left her in peace she could not now be at peace, and
immediately felt this.
4752
In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but did
not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw
herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain,
though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.
4753
Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.
4754
"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."
4755
Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room with
an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his face
brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat down
beside the sofa.
4756
"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but
Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,
obviously in haste to say what he had to.
4757
"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I only
got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to have a
talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.
4758
The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
4759
"I am at your disposal," she murmured.
4760
Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.
4761
"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.
4762
Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she was not
mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be decided.
4763
"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.
4764
Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew and at
her mother and went out.
4765
"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said Prince
Andrew.
4766
The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
4767
"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent, looking
into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is agreeable to us,
and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband... I hope... but it
will depend on her...."
4768
"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it to
me?" said Prince Andrew.
4769
"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and with a
mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips to his
forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him as a
son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man. "I am
sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your father..."
4770
"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.
4771
"It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as that?..."
4772
"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
4773
"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.
4774
"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.
4775
Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on the
bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
up and flew to her.
4776
"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."
4777
"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess, coldly
it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
4778
Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When she
came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger has
now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately
answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than
everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast
eyes.
4779
"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"
4780
He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned expression
of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you cannot but
know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"
4781
She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
4782
"Do you love me?"
4783
"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed loudly
and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.
4784
"What is it? What's the matter?"
4785
"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent over
closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether she
might, and then kissed him.
4786
Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in
his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear
at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of
the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present feeling, though
not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious.
4787
"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked Prince
Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
4788
"Is it possible that I- the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called me,"
thought Natasha- "is it possible that I am now to be the wife and the
equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father looks up
to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no more playing
with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies a responsibility
for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he ask me?"
4789
"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.
4790
"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already been
through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
yourself."
4791
Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing to
take in the meaning of his words.
4792
"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued Prince
Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask you to
make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall remain
a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or should you
come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural smile.
4793
"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that from the
very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she cried, quite
convinced that she spoke the truth.
4794
"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."
4795
"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that the
marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
year?..."
4796
Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
Natasha did not hear him.
4797
"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply, but
his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
4798
"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and again
burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's impossible, it's
awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in it a look of
commiseration and perplexity.
4799
"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears. "I
am so happy."
4800
The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed couple
their blessing.
4801
From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as Natasha's
affianced lover.
4802
CHAPTER XXIV
4803
No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski
was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said that as he
was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it;
that he had given his word and bound himself forever, but that he did
not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom. If after six
months she felt that she did not love him she would have full right to
reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her parents wished to hear of
this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came every day to the Rostovs',
but did not behave to Natasha as an affianced lover: he did not use the
familiar thou, but said you to her, and kissed only her hand. After
their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations
sprang up between them. It was as if they had not known each other till
now. Both liked to recall how they had regarded each other when as yet
they were nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite
different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere.
At first the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince
Andrew; he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha
trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that
he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them,
and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a
few days they grew accustomed to him, and without restraint in his
presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he took his part. He
could talk about rural economy with the count, fashions with the
countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork with Sonya.
Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his presence
expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident
omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe and
their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and Prince
Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew's
encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening
that it had to be.
4804
In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and go
away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which she
constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his son.
Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now- Natasha particularly liked
it in him- and said that his son would not live with them.
4805
"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.
4806
"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."
4807
"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing his
thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding fault
with us."
4808
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask his
advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old countess
sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting frightened lest
she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for leaving them
alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew spoke (he
could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him with pride; when
she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed attentively and
scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in perplexity: "What does he
look for in me? He is trying to discover something by looking at me!
What if what he seeks in me is not there?" Sometimes she fell into one
of the mad, merry moods characteristic of her, and then she
particularly loved to hear and see how Prince Andrew laughed. He seldom
laughed, but when he did he abandoned himself entirely to his laughter,
and after such a laugh she always felt nearer to him. Natasha would
have been completely happy if the thought of the separation awaiting
her and drawing near had not terrified her, just as the mere thought of
it made him turn pale and cold.
4809
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought with
him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.
Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
4810
"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"
4811
"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."
4812
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of
his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
4813
"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known him
from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie," Prince
Andrew said with sudden seriousness- "I am going away and heaven knows
what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know I am not to say
that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when I am not
here..."
4814
"What can happen?"
4815
"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but he
has a heart of gold."
4816
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew
himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would act
on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that day,
dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding
what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking leave, he kissed
her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a tone that made
him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he remembered
long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone; but for several days
she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only
saying now and then, "Oh, why did he go away?"
4817
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and became
her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a
child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.
4818
CHAPTER XXV
4819
During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's
health and temper became much worse. He grew still more irritable, and
it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of his frequent fits
of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out her tender spots
so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible. Princess Mary had
two passions and consequently two joys- her nephew, little Nicholas,
and religion- and these were the favorite subjects of the prince's
attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken of he would bring round to
the superstitiousness of old maids, or the petting and spoiling of
children. "You want to make him"- little Nicholas- "into an old maid
like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants a son and not an old maid,"
he would say. Or, turning to Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her
in Princess Mary's presence how she liked our village priests and icons
and would joke about them.
4820
He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her, but it
cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame toward her, or
could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of it all, be
unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought of that proud
word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for her in one
clear and simple law- the law of love and self-sacrifice taught us by
Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself was God. What
had she to do with the justice or injustice of other people? She had to
endure and love, and that she did.
4821
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had been
gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known him for
a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him, but he
said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a long talk
with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed that before
his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
4822
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls dream)
of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in mourning for
her own brother, killed in Turkey.
4823
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
4824
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and your
excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone, can- I
will not say comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion alone can
explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend: why, for
what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in life- not
merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of others- are
called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons, or such as
are a burden to themselves and to others, are left living. The first
death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of my dear
sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as you ask destiny why
your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that angel Lise, who
not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there were never any
unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think, dear friend? Five
years have passed since then, and already I, with my petty
understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in what way
that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness of the
Creator, whose every action, though generally incomprehensible to us,
is but a manifestation of His infinite love for His creatures. Perhaps,
I often think, she was too angelically innocent to have the strength to
perform all a mother's duties. As a young wife she was irreproachable;
perhaps she could not have been so as a mother. As it is, not only has
she left us, and particularly Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets
and memories, but probably she will there receive a place I dare not
hope for myself. But not to speak of her alone, that early and terrible
death has had the most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in
spite of all our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts
could not occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror,
but now they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear
friend, only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for
me a principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall
without His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for
us, and so whatever befalls us is for our good.
4825
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You will
be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte! The case
is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he cannot
stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This irritability
is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions. He cannot
endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal terms with
all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own, the
grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite indifferent to
politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks with Michael
Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and especially about the
honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at Bald Hills in the whole
world, it seems, is not accepted as a great man, still less as Emperor
of France. And my father cannot stand this. It seems to me that it is
chiefly because of his political views that my father is reluctant to
speak of going to Moscow; for he foresees the encounters that would
result from his way of expressing his views regardless of anybody. All
the benefit he might derive from a course of treatment he would lose as
a result of the disputes about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In
any case it will be decided very shortly.
4826
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother Andrew's
absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much of late.
After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his spirits. He has
again become as I used to know him when a child: kind, affectionate,
with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has realized, it
seems to me, that life is not over for him. But together with this
mental change he has grown physically much weaker. He has become
thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him and glad he is taking
this trip abroad which the doctors recommended long ago. I hope it will
cure him. You write that in Petersburg he is spoken of as one of the
most active, cultivated, and capable of the young men. Forgive my
vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it. The good he has done to
everybody here, from his peasants up to the gentry, is incalculable. On
his arrival in Petersburg he received only his due. I always wonder at
the way rumors fly from Petersburg to Moscow, especially such false
ones as that you write about- I mean the report of my brother's
betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think my brother will ever
marry again, and certainly not her; and this is why: first, I know that
though he rarely speaks about the wife he has lost, the grief of that
loss has gone too deep in his heart for him ever to decide to give her
a successor and our little angel a stepmother. Secondly because, as far
as I know, that girl is not the kind of girl who could please Prince
Andrew. I do not think he would choose her for a wife, and frankly I do
not wish it. But I am running on too long and am at the end of my
second sheet. Good-by, my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and
mighty care. My dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
4827
MARY
4828
CHAPTER XXVI
4829
In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected letter
from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her strange and
surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to Natasha Rostova.
The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his betrothed and tender
and confiding affection for his sister. He wrote that he had never
loved as he did now and that only now did he understand and know what
life was. He asked his sister to forgive him for not having told her of
his resolve when he had last visited Bald Hills, though he had spoken
of it to his father. He had not done so for fear Princess Mary should
ask her father to give his consent, irritating him and having to bear
the brunt of his displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides,"
he wrote, "the matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now.
My father then insisted on a delay of a year and now already six
months, half of that period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer
than ever. If the doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be
back in Russia, but as it is I have to postpone my return for three
months. You know me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from
him. I have been and always shall be independent; but to go against his
will and arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such
a short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him
about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand
him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and
whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four
months."
4830
After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave the
letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her quietly:
4831
"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't be
long- I shall soon set him free."
4832
The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her speak
and, raising his voice more and more, cried:
4833
"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell
him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little
Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He
mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more women
are wanted in my house- let him marry and live by himself. Perhaps you
will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to Princess Mary. "Go
in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the frost... the frost!
4834
After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the matter.
But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior found
expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former pretexts for
irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers and
amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
4835
"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
splendid princess!"
4836
And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary noticed
that her father was really associating more and more with the
Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to the
idea.
4837
Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and religion
were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that, since
everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the profoundest
depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that supplied the chief
consolation of her life. This comforting dream and hope were given her
by God's folk- the half-witted and other pilgrims who visited her
without the prince's knowledge. The longer she lived, the more
experience and observation she had of life, the greater was her wonder
at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here
on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to
obtain that impossible, visionary, sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had
loved his wife, she died, but that was not enough: he wanted to bind
his happiness to another woman. Her father objected to this because he
wanted a more distinguished and wealthier match for Andrew. And they
all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their
souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure
but for an instant. Not only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the
Son of God, came down to earth and told us that this life is but for a
moment and is a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find
happiness in it. "How is it that no one realizes this?" thought
Princess Mary. "No one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on
back, come to me by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince,
not for fear of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To
leave family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order
without clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to
place under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-
for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:
higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"
4838
There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty called
Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot and worn
heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her. Once, when in
a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia was talking of
her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found the true path of
life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force that she resolved
to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone to sleep Princess
Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last made up her mind
that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a pilgrimage. She
disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor, Father Akinfi,
the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise of a present
for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's complete costume
for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough coat, and a black
kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers containing this
secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain whether the time had
not already come to put her project into execution.
4839
Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by their
simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep meaning,
that several times she was on the point of abandoning everything and
running away from home. In imagination she already pictured herself by
Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags, walking with a staff, a
wallet on her back, along the dusty road, directing her wanderings from
one saint's shrine to another, free from envy, earthly love, or desire,
and reaching at last the place where there is no more sorrow or
sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.
4840
"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to get
used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on till
my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at last
reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow nor
sighing..." thought Princess Mary.
4841
But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that she
was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.
4842
BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
4843
CHAPTER I
4844
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness- was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not
only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but
because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at
ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If
man could find a state in which he felt that though idle he was
fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man's
primitive blessedness. And such a state of obligatory and
irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class- the military. The
chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in
this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
4845
Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full when,
after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment, in which
he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from Denisov.
4846
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was
well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters
from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their affairs
were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it was time
for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.
4847
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to take
him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt
that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,
with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its
accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society, and
with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold, formal
letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending: "Your
obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In 1810 he
received letters from his parents, in which they told him of Natasha's
engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in a year's time
because the old prince made difficulties. This letter grieved and
mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that Natasha, for
whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family, should be lost
to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of view, he regretted
not to have been there to show that fellow Bolkonski that connection
with him was no such great honor after all, and that if he loved
Natasha he might dispense with permission from his dotard father. For a
moment he hesitated whether he should not apply for leave in order to
see Natasha before she was married, but then came the maneuvers, and
considerations about Sonya and about the confusion of their affairs,
and Nicholas again put it off. But in the spring of that year, he
received a letter from his mother, written without his father's
knowledge, and that letter persuaded him to return. She wrote that if
he did not come and take matters in hand, their whole property would be
sold by auction and they would all have to go begging. The count was so
weak, and trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that
everybody took advantage of him and things were going from bad to
worse. "For God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish
to make me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.
4848
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.
4849
The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any rate
to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but after his
after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely vicious
gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and when he
returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was going
home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he would
go away without having heard from the staff- and this interested him
extremely- whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive the
Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to think
that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the Polish
Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had betted
he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it seemed
that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had given
one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would take place
without him- he knew he must go away from this good, bright world to
somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week later he
obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of his own
regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a dinner to which the
subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were two
bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with Major
Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped Rostov; the
soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted "hurrah!"
and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as far as the
first post station.
4850
During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev- all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with the
squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to forget his
three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to wonder anxiously
how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would find there. Thoughts
of home grew stronger the nearer he approached it- far stronger, as
though this feeling of his was subject to the law by which the force of
attraction is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. At
the last post station before Otradnoe he gave the driver a three-ruble
tip, and on arriving he ran breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of
his home.
4851
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of unsatisfied
expectation- the feeling that "everything is just the same, so why did
I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle down in his old home world. His
father and mother were much the same, only a little older. What was new
in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional discord, which there
used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found out, was due to the
bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly twenty; she had stopped
growing prettier and promised nothing more than she was already, but
that was enough. She exhaled happiness and love from the time Nicholas
returned, and the faithful, unalterable love of this girl had a
gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha surprised Nicholas most.
Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen, merry, witty, and
mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking. As for Natasha,
for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed whenever he looked at
her.
4852
"You're not the same at all," he said.
4853
"How? Am I uglier?"
4854
"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to her.
4855
"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.
4856
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit to
Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.
4857
"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy now."
4858
"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And are
you very much in love?"
4859
"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris, with
my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel at
peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and I am
calm and contented now. Not at all as before."
4860
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the marriage
for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with exasperation, proving
to him that it could not be otherwise, and that it would be a bad thing
to enter a family against the father's will, and that she herself
wished it so.
4861
"You don't at all understand," she said.
4862
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
4863
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem at all
like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband. She was
even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This amazed
Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship skeptically. He
could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially as he had not
seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him that there was
something not quite right about this intended marriage.
4864
"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his surprise
and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her soul she too
had doubts about this marriage.
4865
"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His health
is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach importance to
her being so bright: that's because she's living through the last days
of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every time we receive a
letter from him! However, God grant that everything turns out well!"
(She always ended with these words.) "He is an excellent man!"
4866
CHAPTER II
4867
After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull. He was
worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid
business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw off
this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his arrival
he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as to where
he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of everything.
But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew even less than
the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation and the
examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long. The village
elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were waiting in
the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young count's voice
roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and then words of
abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.
4868
"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm not
my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.
4869
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red in
the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff of
the neck and applied his foot and knee to him behind with great agility
at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off! Never let
me see your face here again, you villain!"
4870
Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for
culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the town,
used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe, hiding from
Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
4871
Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and frightened
faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar was boiling and
where the steward's high bedstead stood with its patchwork quilt.
4872
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.
4873
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened at the
lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would certainly
improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect this
excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his door on
tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
4874
Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:
4875
"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
told me all about it."
4876
"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything in
this crazy world."
4877
"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they were
carried forward- and you did not look at the other page."
4878
"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."
4879
"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he had
mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his children,
but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to attend to the
business. I am old. I..."
4880
"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I understand
it all less than you do."
4881
"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a
'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to another
page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after that he
did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess called her
son and informed him that she had a promissory note from Anna
Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he thought of
doing with it.
4882
"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I don't
like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were our friends
and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and by so doing
caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that, young Rostov
took no further part in any business affairs, but devoted himself with
passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuit- the chase- for
which his father kept a large establishment.
4883
CHAPTER III
4884
The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed an
earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter
rye trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of
the spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the
end of August had still been green islands amid black fields and
stubble, had become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter
rye. The hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox
cubs were beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than
dogs. It was the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of
that ardent young sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter
condition, but were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was
decided to give them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of
September, to go on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove
where there was an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
4885
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out
of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it
was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any
wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung
with transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The
earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like
poppy seed and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of
mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell
of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched
bitch with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched
her hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and
licked him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog,
catching sight of his master from the garden path, arched his back and,
rushing headlong toward the porch with lifted tail, began rubbing
himself against his legs.
4886
"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call which
unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round the corner
came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray, wrinkled old
man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian fashion, a long
bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence and scorn of
everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his Circassian cap
to his master and looked at him scornfully. This scorn was not
offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel, disdainful of
everybody and who considered himself above them, was all the same his
serf and huntsman.
4887
"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the weather,
the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away by that
irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all his
previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his
mistress.
4888
"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep bass,
deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and two flashing
black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who was silent.
"Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.
4889
"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked Nicholas,
scratching Milka behind the ears.
4890
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
4891
"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a minute's
pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure. They were
howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom they both
knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small place a
mile and a half from the house.)
4892
"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me with
Uvarka."
4893
"As you please."
4894
"Then put off feeding them."
4895
"Yes, sir."
4896
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas' big
study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was like
seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual
stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for
fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he hastened
to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that ceiling, out
into the open under the sky once more.
4897
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion that
the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting), Nicholas
ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was about to go
Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her hair or
finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped round her.
Petya ran in at the same time.
4898
"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you couldn't
help going."
4899
"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as he
intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and Petya.
"We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for you."
4900
"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;
you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said
nothing to us about it."
4901
"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya.
4902
"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.
4903
"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively. "Daniel,
tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my dogs," she
added to the huntsman.
4904
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but to
have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible. He cast
down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his business,
careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on the young
lady.
4905
CHAPTER IV
4906
The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting establishment
but had now handed it all completely over to his son's care, being in
very good spirits on this fifteenth of September, prepared to go out
with the others.
4907
In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch. Nicholas,
with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no time for
attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were trying to
tell him something. He had a look at all the details of the hunt, sent
a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the quarry, mounted his
chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of borzois, set off
across the threshing ground to a field leading to the Otradnoe wood.
The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called Viflyanka, was led by
the groom in attendance on him, while the count himself was to drive in
a small trap straight to a spot reserved for him.
4908
They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and
more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
4909
Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business. his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.
4910
The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and then
splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky still
seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the air
was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a huntsman,
the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a straggling
hound could be heard.
4911
When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders with
dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In front rode a
fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray mustache.
4912
"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.
4913
"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was a
distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll take
the cubs from under your very nose."
4914
"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked Nicholas.
4915
The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas rode on
side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide her
eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed by
Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and by a
groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing, whipped and
pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on her black
Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
4916
"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
4917
"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.
4918
"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds," said
"Uncle" sternly.
4919
"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
referring to her favorite hound.
4920
"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel the
distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha understood
it.
4921
"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said. "We'll
go to our places and won't budge."
4922
"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you don't
fall off your horse," he added, "because- that's it, come on!- you've
nothing to hold on to."
4923
The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off,
the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally settled
with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having shown
Natasha where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could possibly run
out- went round above the ravine.
4924
"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
don't let her slip!"
4925
"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he shouted,
answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi. Karay was a
shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having tackled a big
wolf unaided. They all took up their places.
4926
The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as not
to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached their places when
Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove
up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for
him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and
fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,
well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,
like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,
though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,
and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged
his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was
ready, looked about with a smile.
4927
Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old horseman
now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three
formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master
and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred paces
farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's other
groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the hunt, by
old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled brandy, taken
a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his favorite
Bordeaux.
4928
He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his
saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out
for an outing.
4929
The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready, kept
glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of terms for
thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in expected a pleasant
chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through the wood (it was
plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind the count. This
person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's cloak, with a tall
peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who went by a woman's name,
Nastasya Ivanovna.
4930
"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him. "If you
scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"
4931
"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.
4932
"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen the
young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"
4933
"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered Simon,
smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."
4934
"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the count.
"She's as good as many a man!"
4935
"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"
4936
"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"
4937
"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so well
that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well knowing
what would please his master.
4938
"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"
4939
"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand rubles
and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search far to
find another as smart."
4940
"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his coat
to get at his snuffbox.
4941
"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three hounds
giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a warning
finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs... " he
whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."
4942
The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked into
the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space, holding
the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry of the
hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's hunting horn;
the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be heard in full
cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that indicates that they are
after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on the hounds, but changed
to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others rose Daniel's voice, now a
deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice seemed to fill the whole
wood and carried far beyond out into the open field.
4943
After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his attendant
convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into two packs: the
sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue, began to die away in
the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood past the count, and it
was with this that Daniel's voice was heard calling ulyulyu. The sounds
of both packs mingled and broke apart again, but both were becoming
more distant.
4944
Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi had
entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in his hand,
opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a borzoi that was
pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and dropped the
snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up. The count and
Simon were looking at him.
4945
Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were
just in front of them.
4946
The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to
the other side.
4947
"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had long
fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he galloped
toward the count.
4948
The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
horses' feet at the wolf.
4949
The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly,
like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from
side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail
disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry
like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang
helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across
the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The
hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel's chestnut horse
appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back sat Daniel, hunched
forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging over his flushed,
perspiring face.
4950
"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the count
his eyes flashed lightning.
4951
"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the
count.
4952
"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if scorning to say
more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a punished
schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's sympathy for
his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was galloping round by
the bushes while the field was coming up on both sides, all trying to
head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood before they could do so.
4953
CHAPTER V
4954
Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the wolf.
By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of the dogs
whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of the huntsmen
approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was happening at the
copse. He knew that young and old wolves were there, that the hounds
had separated into two packs, that somewhere a wolf was being chased,
and that something had gone wrong. He expected the wolf to come his way
any moment. He made thousands of different conjectures as to where and
from what side the beast would come and how he would set upon it. Hope
alternated with despair. Several times he addressed a prayer to God
that the wolf should come his way. He prayed with that passionate and
shame-faced feeling with which men pray at moments of great excitement
arising from trivial causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for
me?" he said to God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to
ask this of Thee, but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way
and let Karay spring at it- in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from
over there- and seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand
times during that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over
the edge of the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen
undergrowth and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap
just visible above the bush on his right.
4955
"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it be
worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am always
unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed rapidly and
clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get an old wolf, I
want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears and looking to the
left and then to the right and listening to the slightest variation of
note in the cries of the dogs.
4956
Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him
across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a
deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped for.
The height of happiness was reached- and so simply, without warning, or
noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his eyes and remained
in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and jumped heavily
over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old animal with a gray
back and big reddish belly. She ran without hurry, evidently feeling
sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his breath, looked round at
the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing the wolf or understanding the
situation. Old Karay had turned his head and was angrily searching for
fleas, baring his yellow teeth and snapping at his hind legs.
4957
"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped
up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay
finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up with
quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.
4958
"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
seen before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head a little
toward Rostov, she paused.
4959
"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to say to
herself, and she moved forward without again looking round and with a
quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.
4960
"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own
accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies to
head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.
Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping, nor
see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only the
wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same direction along
the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka, with her black
markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the wolf. Nearer and
nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf turned its head to face
her, and instead of putting on speed as she usually did Milka suddenly
raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.
4961
"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.
4962
The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang impetuously
at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but immediately jumped
aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her teeth, and again rose
and bounded forward, followed at the distance of a couple of feet by
all the borzois, who did not get any closer to her.
4963
"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still
shouting with a hoarse voice.
4964
"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi who
was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left him,
stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped
heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf's lope and
the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay had miscalculated.
Nicholas could already see not far in front of him the wood where the
wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming toward
him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the
wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish young borzoi, one
Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed impetuously at the
wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up
more quickly than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her teeth,
flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing yelp, fell with
its head on the ground, bleeding from a gash in its side.
4965
"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.
4966
Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path, the old
dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within five paces
of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her eyes on Karay,
tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and increased her speed.
But here Nicholas only saw that something happened to Karay- the borzoi
was suddenly on the wolf, and they rolled together down into a gully
just in front of them.
4967
That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully with
the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest
moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to
dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up from
among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge of the
gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the throat),
leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and having
disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again, went
forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or wounded,
climbed with difficulty out of the gully.
4968
"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.
4969
"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the wolf's
path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance. She was
again hemmed in.
4970
Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were all
riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.
4971
Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the
ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,
and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he saw
that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself and
ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf but
straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the animal off.
As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just when she had been
stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.
4972
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand
and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip as
if it were a flail.
4973
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut, breathing
heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body and saw
Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to seize her by
the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to the wolf
herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed back her ears
and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her. Daniel rose a little,
took a step, and with his whole weight, as if lying down to rest, fell
on the wolf, seizing her by the ears. Nicholas was about to stab her,
but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll gag her!" and, changing his
position, set his foot on the wolf's neck. A stick was thrust between
her jaws and she was fastened with a leash, as if bridled, her legs
were bound together, and Daniel rolled her over once or twice from side
to side.
4974
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a shying
and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her, took
her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had killed two
of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled with their
booty and their stories, and all came to look at the wolf, which, with
her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten stick between her
jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd of dogs and men
surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked her bound legs and
looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count Rostov also rode up
and touched the wolf.
4975
"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he asked
Daniel, who was standing near.
4976
"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
4977
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.
4978
"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.
4979
For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.
4980
CHAPTER VI
4981
The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return very
soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At midday they
put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with young trees.
Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his whips.
4982
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood
alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been
loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at
intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving
tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a fox
had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along the
ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.
4983
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
4984
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois, and
Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going hard
across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew close
to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and
sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white
borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in
confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying
their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the group.
Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the other, a
stranger, in a green coat.
4985
"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He is not
'Uncle's' man."
4986
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without
strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high
saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The
huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that
spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of a
fight.
4987
"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said Nicholas'
groom.
4988
Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode at a
footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds together.
Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight was going on.
4989
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden up,
stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out
of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward
his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a
distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he
was pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was
black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
4990
"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.
4991
"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray
bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the fox! I
gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste
of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably
imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
4992
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Petya
to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's, Ilagin's,
hunting party was.
4993
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
4994
The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel and
were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostovs,
and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the
Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had
chased.
4995
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He
rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and fully
prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish his
enemy.
4996
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman in a
beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black horse,
accompanied by two hunt servants.
4997
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and courteous
gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young count's
acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised his beaver
cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and would have the man
punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox hunted by someone
else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted with the count and
invited him to draw his covert.
4998
Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging friendly
greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver cap still
higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that the young
countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as well as in her
beauty, of which he had heard much.
4999
To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to come
to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for himself
and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and the hunt,
now doubled, moved on.
5000
The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt servants
fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov, and Ilagin
kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying not to be
observed by their companions and searching uneasily for rivals to their
own borzois.
5001
Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small, pure-bred,
red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with muscles like
steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He had heard of the
swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that beautiful bitch saw a rival
to his own Milka.
5002
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the year's
harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
5003
"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she
swift?"
5004
"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So in
your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he went
on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering it
polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his
borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her
breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!" said
he.
5005
"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only a
full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort of
borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a ruble
to anyone who found a hare.
5006
"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be so
jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I enjoy
riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he again
raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what one
takes, I don't care about that."
5007
"Of course not!"
5008
"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so,
Count? For I consider that..."
5009
"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who
had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft,
and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and the
uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
5010
"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we must
ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing in Erza
and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a chance of
pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo my Milka at
once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin toward the hare.
5011
"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
sighted the hare- and not without agitation he looked round and
whistled to Erza.
5012
"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."
5013
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
5014
"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"
5015
"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily by
this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on
this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men
and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
5016
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the
gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off
on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but not the
gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and sedately.
5017
"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces toward the
whip who had sighted the hare.
5018
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash
rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the
borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.
All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling in
the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped
across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,
Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they
went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose
sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started was a
strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at once, but
pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling that resounded
from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not very quickly,
letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having chosen his
direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and rushed off
headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of him was the
autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois of the
huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the first
to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's
red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare
with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had
seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and
bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the
broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the
hare.
5019
"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if Milka
would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew
past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but
when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the distance, so
as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.
5020
"Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did not
hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized
her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter
rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a
pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was
easier for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake
him so quickly.
5021
"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just then,
and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up
with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the
terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the
balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how,
muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois
surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of
dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking
the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with
restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without
himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it, come on! That's a
dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as
the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come on!" said he, panting and
looking wrathfully around as if he were abusing someone, as if they
were all his enemies and had insulted him, and only now had he at last
succeeded in justifying himself. "There are your thousand-ruble
ones.... That's it, come on!..."
5022
"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's muddy
pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"
5023
"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether
he were heard or not.
5024
"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's
groom.
5025
"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,"
Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his
excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing breath,
screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others
expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that she must
herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have
been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself twisted up the
hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's back as if by that
gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing
to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The others all
followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much later were they able
to regain their former affectation of indifference. For a long time
they continued to look at red Rugay who, his arched back spattered with
mud and clanking the ring of his leash, walked along just behind
"Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a conqueror.
5026
"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seem to
Nicholas to be saying.
5027
When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to him,
he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle" deigned to
speak to him.
5028
CHAPTER VII
5029
Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they were
so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the hunting
party should spend the night in his little village of Mikhaylovna.
5030
"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could rest,
and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."
5031
"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for a
trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.
5032
Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the front
porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and young, as
well as children, popped out from the back entrance to have a look at
the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha- a woman, a
lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs to such a
degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the face, and
unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though she were
some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or understand
what was said about her.
5033
"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"
5034
"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."
5035
"Isn't she a Tartar!"
5036
"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
addressing Natasha directly.
5037
"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which stood
in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should
take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made
to receive the guests and the visitors.
5038
The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and
taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch. The
house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean- it did
not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but
neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
5039
"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with a
folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a round
birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room where
there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of
the host's father and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The
study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked his visitors to
sit down and make themselves at home, and then went out of the room.
Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and lay down on the
sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth. Leading from the
study was a passage in which a partition with ragged curtains could be
seen. From behind this came women's laughter and whispers. Natasha,
Nicholas, and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa.
Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas
were silent. Their faces glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful.
They looked at one another (now that the hunt was over and they were in
the house, Nicholas no longer considered it necessary to show his manly
superiority over his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither
refrained long from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even
before they had a pretext ready to account for it.
5040
After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one she
had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the
right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.
"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that
they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
merriment.
5041
"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw anyone
like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem and, with
a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another that had been
cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as fresh as ever!
5042
Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently from
the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking woman
of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered carrying
a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in her
glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and, with a
pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional
stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and throw
back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod very
lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her plump
white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors d'oeuvres
and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had finished, she
stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on her face. "Here I
am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her expression said to
Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not only Nicholas, but even
Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered brow and the happy
complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips when Anisya Fedorovna
entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb wine, different kinds of
vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with buttermilk, honey in the
comb, still mead and sparkling mead, apples, nuts (raw and roasted),
and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards she brought a freshly roasted
chicken, ham, preserves made with honey, and preserves made with sugar.
5043
All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping, gathered and
prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a smack of Anisya
Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness, cleanliness, whiteness, and
pleasant smiles.
5044
"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
Natasha first one thing and then another.
5045
Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten such
buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets, or such
a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.
5046
After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried several
times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only muttered
incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so lighthearted and
happy in these novel surroundings that she only feared the trap would
come for her too soon. After a casual pause, such as often occurs when
receiving friends for the first time in one's own house, "Uncle,"
answering a thought that was in his visitors' mind, said:
5047
"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.
That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"
5048
"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said this.
Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about him from
his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province "Uncle" had
the reputation of being the most honorable and disinterested of cranks.
They called him in to decide family disputes, chose him as executor,
confided secrets to him, elected him to be a justice and to other
posts; but he always persistently refused public appointments, passing
the autumn and spring in the fields on his bay gelding, sitting at home
in winter, and lying in his overgrown garden in summer.
5049
"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"
5050
"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come on! I
can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't brains enough.
Now, hunting is another matter- that's it, come on! Open the door,
there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"
5051
The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as they
called the room for the hunt servants.
5052
There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
now went out into the passage to hear better.
5053
"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka. I'm
fond of it," said "Uncle."
5054
It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the huntsmen's
room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond of such
music.
5055
"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some unintentional
superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the sounds pleased him
very much.
5056
"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's tone.
"Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"
5057
Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had
seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that moment,
seemed to her the acme of musical delight.
5058
"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the
balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the
balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"
sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air was
repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several times and
the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did not grow
weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya Fedorovna
came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.
5059
"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely like
"Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.
5060
"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out- that's it, come on!-
ought to burst out."
5061
"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.
5062
"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.
5063
"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I
haven't touched it for a long time. That's it- come on! I've given it
up."
5064
Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.
5065
Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping
the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself in
his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,
arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a
wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous, and
then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow
time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the
street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to
thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the same
kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole being.
Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her face went
laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play correctly,
carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a changed and inspired
expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had just stood. Something
seemed to be laughing a little on one side of his face under his gray
mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker and the time quicker and
when, here and there, as he ran his fingers over the strings, something
seemed to snap.
5066
"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he
had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,
Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What is
it moves me so?"
5067
Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face reappeared
in the doorway and behind hers other faces...
5068
Fetching water clear and sweet,
5069
played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.
5070
"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her life
depended on it.
5071
"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of them
smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow struck a
naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
5072
"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
just struck a chord.
5073
Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to face
"Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with her
shoulders and struck an attitude.
5074
Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that spirit
and obtained that manner which the pas de chale67 would, one
would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the
movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that
"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and
smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that had
at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do the right
thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.
67
The French shawl dance.
5075
She did the right thing with such precision, such complete precision,
that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the handkerchief she
needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she
watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in silks and velvets and
so different from herself, who yet was able to understand all that was
in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother and aunt, and in every
Russian man and woman.
5076
"Well, little countess; that's it- come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it- come on!"
5077
"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.
5078
"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha, who
nodded her head with a happy smile.
5079
"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new train
of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile mean
when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is as if he
thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our gaiety. But
he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought, and her face
suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second. "Don't dare to
think about it," she said to herself, and sat down again smilingly
beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.
5080
"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he cleared
his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
5081
As 'twas growing dark last night
5082
"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that the
whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune comes of
itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which exists
only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the unconsidered
tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily good. Natasha was in
ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to give up learning the
harp and to play only the guitar. She asked "Uncle" for his guitar and
at once found the chords of the song.
5083
After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been sent
to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count and
countess did not know where they were and were very anxious, said one
of the men.
5084
Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped Natasha
up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness. He
accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be
crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent huntsmen
to ride in front with lanterns.
5085
"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness- not the
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
growing dark last night.
5086
In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
cheerful smell of smoke.
5087
"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto
the highroad.
5088
"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"
5089
"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
5090
What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly
caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did
they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were
nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark
last night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get
and had at last caught.
5091
"Got it?" said Nicholas.
5092
"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.
5093
They were fond of asking one another that question.
5094
"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I thought
that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were a man he
would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then for his
manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?... Well, and
you?"
5095
"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving along
and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows where we
are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive and suddenly
find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And then I
thought... No, nothing else."
5096
"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as
Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
5097
"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about
Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would have
liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How well
Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her spontaneous,
happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she suddenly said, "I know
that I shall never again be as happy and tranquil as I am now."
5098
"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought: "How
charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her and
never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive about
together!
5099
"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.
5100
"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said, pointing to
the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the moist velvety
darkness of the night.
5101
CHAPTER VIII
5102
Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the Nobility
because it involved him in too much expense, but still his affairs did
not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their parents
conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of
selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near Moscow. It was
not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been
Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in former years, but
still the enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more
than twenty sat down to table every day. These were all their own
people who had settled down in the house almost as members of the
family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count's
house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife, Vogel the dancing
master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady, an inmate of the
house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the girls' former
governess, and other people who simply found it preferable and more
advantageous to live in the count's house than at home. They had not as
many visitors as before, but the old habits of life without which the
count and countess could not conceive of existence remained unchanged.
There was still the hunting establishment which Nicholas had even
enlarged, the same fifty horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the
same expensive presents and dinner parties to the whole district on
name days; there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at
which- spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let
himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,
who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a
most profitable source of income.
5103
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe
that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and
feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and
patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart,
felt that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's
fault for he could not help being what he was- that (though he tried to
hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and his
children's ruin, and she tried to find means of remedying the position.
From her feminine point of view she could see only one solution,
namely, for Nicholas to marry a rich heiress. She felt this to be their
last hope and that if Nicholas refused the match she had found for him,
she would have to abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This
match was with Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous
parents, a girl the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now
become a wealthy heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.
5104
The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow suggesting
a marriage between their children and had received a favorable answer
from her. Karagina had replied that for her part she was agreeable, and
everything depend on her daughter's inclination. She invited Nicholas
to come to Moscow.
5105
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son that
now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid girl
and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
5106
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to Moscow
during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of
getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karagina.
5107
"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you
expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of money?"
he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question and only
wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
5108
"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how to
justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
5109
"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I will
give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I would
sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings."
5110
But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did not
want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a sacrifice
for him.
5111
"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.
5112
"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought,
"must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly
be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always
sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself,
"but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for
me stronger and higher than all else."
5113
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and
sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between
her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it,
she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, often
pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my dear," and
using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in speaking to
her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sonya because
that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly
grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and
unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for
finding fault with her.
5114
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter
had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would
have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound
unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer
his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still as
much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love,
and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life
as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their separation she
began to have fits of depression which she could not master. She felt
sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of
no use to anyone- while she felt herself so capable of loving and being
loved.
5115
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.
5116
CHAPTER IX
5117
Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and
the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,
though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine
by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some
special celebration of the season.
5118
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest
time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that
morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was resting
in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round table, copying
a design for embroidery. The countess was playing patience. Nastasya
Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the window with two old
ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to Sonya, glanced at what
she was doing, and then went up to her mother and stood without
speaking.
5119
"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother. "What
do you want?"
5120
"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha, with
glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
5121
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
5122
"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."
5123
"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.
5124
"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"
5125
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned quickly to
hide them and left the room.
5126
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and then
went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling at a
young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold from
the serfs' quarters.
5127
"Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman.
5128
"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."
5129
Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went to
the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.
5130
"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.
5131
"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the yard
and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some oats."
5132
"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
5133
"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.
5134
"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."
5135
On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a samovar,
though it was not at all the time for tea.
5136
Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order and
asked whether the samovar was really wanted.
5137
"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at
Natasha.
5138
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble as
Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to send
them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of them would
get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no one's orders so
readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can I go?" thought she,
as she went slowly along the passage.
5139
"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked the
buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.
5140
"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.
5141
"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am I
to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
5142
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which were
plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were
discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha
sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air, and
then got up again.
5143
"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.
5144
Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on him
he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
5145
"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."
5146
Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
5147
"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off his
back she went downstairs.
5148
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made sure
that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was dull,
Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar, sat down
in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her fingers over
the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she recalled from an
opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew. What she drew
from the guitar would have had no meaning for other listeners, but in
her imagination a whole series of reminiscences arose from those
sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes fixed on a streak of
light escaping from the pantry door and listened to herself and
pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on the past.
5149
Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at
her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she
remembered the light failing through that crack once before and Sonya
passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the same,"
thought Natasha.
5150
"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.
5151
"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of
being wrong.
5152
"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in just
the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."
5153
"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha sang
the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where were you
going?" she asked.
5154
"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."
5155
"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
where's Nicholas?"
5156
"Asleep, I think."
5157
"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come
and sing."
5158
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting
not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was
with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.
5159
"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't then
be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will come
immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room.
Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose, put down
the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
5160
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were already
at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- but Prince Andrew
was not there and life was going on as before.
5161
"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.
"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced
round as if looking for something.
5162
"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
5163
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the
elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my God!
The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the
same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion
rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the
same.
5164
After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
5165
CHAPTER X
5166
Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when they
settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you to feel
as if there were nothing more to come- nothing; that everything good is
past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"
5167
"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when everything
was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my
mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once
in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was
music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."
5168
"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I was
quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I was
punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat sobbing
in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and sorry for
everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was innocent- that was
the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"
5169
"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt ashamed
to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and wanted to give
it to you. Do you remember?"
5170
"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how once,
long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us into the
study- that was in the old house- and it was dark- we went in and
suddenly there stood..."
5171
"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course I
remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or if
we only dreamed it or were told about him."
5172
"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and looked
at us..."
5173
"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.
5174
"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.
5175
"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said Natasha,
"and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you remember!"
5176
"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."
5177
"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."
5178
"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,
and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was that
real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"
5179
"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun in the
porch?"
5180
So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not the sad
memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones- those impressions of
one's most distant past in which dreams and realities blend- and they
laughed with quiet enjoyment.
5181
Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they shared
the same reminiscences.
5182
Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.
She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
5183
She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first arrival. She
told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because he had on a
corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too, would be sewn
up with cords.
5184
"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
cabbage," said Natasha, and I remember that I dared not disbelieve it
then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."
5185
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other door of
the sitting room.
5186
"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.
5187
"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied Natasha.
5188
In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its cloth
covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.
5189
"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the old
countess' voice from the drawing room.
5190
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"
5191
"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a moment
and then continuing the conversation. They were now discussing dreams.
5192
Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the table,
took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself quietly
in her former place. It was dark in the room especially where they were
sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the silvery light of
the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished the piece but
still sat softly running his fingers over the strings, evidently
uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
5193
"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to Nicholas and
Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling memories, one at last
begins to remember what happened before one was in the world..."
5194
"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well, and
remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have
lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."
5195
"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still in a
whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we were
angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."
5196
"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat down
by them.
5197
"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas. "No,
that can't be!"
5198
"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was
before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal- well
then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a
whole eternity."
5199
"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked Dimmler, who
had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now
spoke as quietly and seriously as they.
5200
"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now today,
and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the
day before..."
5201
"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"
5202
"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same she
rose.
5203
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off
their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but
Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as
usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the
resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.
5204
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her and,
like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk
while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mitenka
stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nicholas did not take
his eyes off his sister and drew breath in time with her. Sonya, as she
listened, thought of the immense difference there was between herself
and her friend, and how impossible it was for her to be anything like
as bewitching as her cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet
sad smile and with tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head.
She thought of Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was
something unnatural and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha
and Prince Andrew.
5205
Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
closed eyes.
5206
"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she has
nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness, and strength...."
5207
"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess, not
realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her that
Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she would
not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing, fourteen-year-old
Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some mummers had arrived.
5208
Natasha stopped abruptly.
5209
"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair, threw
herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop for a long
time.
5210
"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled me," she
said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs still choked
her.
5211
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and funny- bringing in with them
the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily
and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas
games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.
5212
Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt- this was Nicholas. A Turkish
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
5213
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from
those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided that
their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown elsewhere.
5214
Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to take
them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them about a
dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."
5215
"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
Melyukovs'"
5216
Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.
5217
"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly aroused.
"I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette open her
eyes."
5218
But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad leg all
these last days. It was decided that the count must not go, but that if
Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the young ladies
might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and shy, more
urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
5219
Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows were
extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very handsome,
and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with her. Some
inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be decided, and
in her male attire she seemed quite a different person. Louisa Ivanovna
consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka sleighs with large and
small bells, their runners squeaking and whistling over the frozen
snow, drove up to the porch.
5220
Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
from one to another, grew stronger and stronger and reached its climax
when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,
talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.
5221
Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was the
old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the
fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his hussar
overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.
5222
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the
metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked round
in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.
5223
Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh;
Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the rest of the
mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
5224
"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
wishing for a chance to race past him.
5225
The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned
bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the
middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar,
and threw it up.
5226
Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the others
moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove at a steady
trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the garden the
shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the
brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy
plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them
glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. Bang, bang!
went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the snow of the road, and
each of the other sleighs jolted in the same way, and rudely breaking
the frost-bound stillness, the troykas began to speed along the road,
one after the other.
5227
"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice through the
frost-bound air.
5228
"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.
5229
Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face closer.
Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches peeped up at
him from her sable furs- so close and yet so distant- in the moonlight.
5230
"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
smiled.
5231
"What is it, Nicholas?"
5232
"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.
5233
When they came out onto the beaten highroad- polished by sleigh runners
and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were visible in the
moonlight- the horses began to tug at the reins of their own accord and
increased their pace. The near side horse, arching his head and
breaking into a short canter, tugged at his traces. The shaft horse
swayed from side to side, moving his ears as if asking: "Isn't it time
to begin now?" In front, already far ahead the deep bell of the sleigh
ringing farther and farther off, the black horses driven by Zakhar
could be clearly seen against the white snow. From that sleigh one
could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices of the mummers.
5234
"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one side
and flourishing the whip.
5235
It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given by the
side horses who pulled harder- ever increasing their gallop- that one
noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back. With
screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft horses
to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung steadily
beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of slackening pace and
ready to put on speed when required.
5236
Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.
5237
"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But no-
this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
5238
Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
5239
Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his arms,
clucked his tongue and let his horses go.
5240
"Now, look out, master!" he cried.
5241
Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.
Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with the
reins.
5242
"No you won't, master!" he shouted.
5243
Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The horses
showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh- beside
them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused glimpses of
swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they were passing.
The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the voices of girls
shrieking were heard from different sides.
5244
Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were still
surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled with
stars.
5245
"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows what
is happening to us- but it is very strange and pleasant whatever it
is." And he looked round in the sleigh.
5246
"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with fine eyebrows and
mustache.
5247
"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
mustache I don't know, but I love her."
5248
"Aren't you cold?" he asked.
5249
They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh behind
shouted something- probably something funny- but they could not make
out what he said.
5250
"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.
5251
"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a glitter
of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver roofs of fairy
buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And if this is really
Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove heaven knows where and
have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.
5252
It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces came
running, out to the porch carrying candles.
5253
"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.
5254
"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
voices.
5255
CHAPTER XI
5256
Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman wearing
spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress, surrounded by her
daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling dull. They were
quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at the shadows the
wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard the steps and
voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
5257
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The clown-
Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by the
screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and disguising
their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged themselves about the
room.
5258
"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she looks
like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn't he
good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya- clear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
voices were saying.
5259
Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into the
back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male garments
were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish arms from
behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young Melyukovs joined the
mummers.
5260
Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles, peering
into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to recognize any
of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she failed to
recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters, or her late
husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put on.
5261
"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face of
her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one of
the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve in?" she
asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she ordered
the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden by his
law."
5262
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by the
dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no one
would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna hid her
face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook with
irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
5263
"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.
5264
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna made
the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a string, and a
silver ruble were fetched and they all played games together.
5265
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The corked
eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring, flushed, and
merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the mummers, admired
their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly how they suited the
young ladies, and she thanked them all for having entertained her so
well. The visitors were invited to supper in the drawing room, and the
serfs had something served to them in the ballroom.
5266
"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!" said
an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.
5267
"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.
5268
"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."
5269
"I'll go," said Sonya.
5270
"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov girl.
5271
"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a cock,
laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After sitting a
while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh drives up with
harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in, just in the shape of
a man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to table with her."
5272
"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.
5273
"Yes? And how... did he speak?"
5274
"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began persuading
her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow, but she got
frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her hands. Then he
caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just then..."
5275
"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.
5276
"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.
5277
"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.
5278
"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on what
you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad; but a sound of shifting
grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."
5279
"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."
5280
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
5281
"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"
5282
"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.
5283
"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"
5284
"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.
5285
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game or
talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at her
with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today, thanks to
that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to know her. And
really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated, and prettier
than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
5286
"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought
gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous
smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.
5287
"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She got
up.
5288
They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and listen,
and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her head and
shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
5289
"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
thinking of till now?"
5290
Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went
hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of people
really had made the house stuffy.
5291
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but even
brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow sparkled
with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the sky and the
real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary, while the
earth was gay.
5292
"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought Nicholas.
and running out from the porch he went round the corner of the house
and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya would pass
that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood and across
and along them a network of shadows from the bare old lime trees fell
on the snow and on the path. This path led to the barn. The log walls
of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked as if hewn out of
some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A tree in the garden
snapped with the frost, and then all was again perfectly silent. His
bosom seemed to inhale not air but the strength of eternal youth and
gladness.
5293
From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he
heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,
along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."
5294
"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her
thin shoes.
5295
Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of paces
away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas she had
known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress, with
tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly toward
him.
5296
"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the cloak
that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and kissed her
on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt cork. Sonya
kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little hands pressed
them to his cheeks.
5297
"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back
porch.
5298
CHAPTER XII
5299
When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who always
saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should
go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and the
maids.
5300
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and
kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's face
and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his
present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He
looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sonya, and being
reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss,
inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground
flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in
fairyland.
5301
"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.
5302
"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"
5303
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for
a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.
5304
"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my mind
about Sonya?"
5305
"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.
5306
"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natasha- are you glad?"
5307
"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not
tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has,
Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while
Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad! Well, run back to
her."
5308
"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and
bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. "Natasha, it's
magical, isn't it?"
5309
"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."
5310
"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should long
ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and
all would have been well."
5311
"So you are glad and I have done right?"
5312
"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I
nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."
5313
"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the expression
of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down
and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same
happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up
from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian
was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his future happy and loving
wife.
5314
When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the
evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their bedroom. When they
had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a
long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would
live when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and
how happy they would be. On Natasha's table stood two looking glasses
which Dunyasha had prepared beforehand.
5315
"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
5316
"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.
5317
Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
glasses, and sat down.
5318
"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.
5319
"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.
5320
With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held into
the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from
tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that
last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take
the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw
nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking
glasses.
5321
"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down now,
Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I feel so
frightened!"
5322
Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.
5323
"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha; "while
you do nothing but laugh."
5324
Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:
5325
"I know she will. She saw something last year."
5326
For about three minutes all were silent.
5327
"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish... suddenly
Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her eyes with
her hand.
5328
"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.
5329
"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up the
looking glass.
5330
Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to get
up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not wish
to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to sit still.
She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped her when
she covered her eyes.
5331
"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.
5332
"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying, not yet
knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
5333
"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.
5334
"Yes, I saw him," she said.
5335
"How? Standing or lying?"
5336
"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying down."
5337
"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes fixed on
her friend.
5338
"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
seen what she described.
5339
"Well, and then, Sonya?..."
5340
"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
red..."
5341
"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how
afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha
began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into
bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.
5342
CHAPTER XIII
5343
Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his love
for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who had
long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that he
might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father would
give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the first time,
felt that his mother was displeased with him and that, despite her love
for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without looking at her son,
she sent for her husband and, when he came, tried briefly and coldly to
inform him of the facts, in her son's presence, but unable to restrain
herself she burst into tears of vexation and left the room. The old
count began irresolutely to admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon
his purpose. Nicholas replied that he could not go back on his word,
and his father, sighing and evidently disconcerted, very soon became
silent and went in to the countess. In all his encounters with his son,
the count was always conscious of his own guilt toward him for having
wasted the family fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for
refusing to marry an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this
occasion, he was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his
affairs had not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than
Sonya could have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his
Mitenka and his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of
the family finances.
5344
The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son again,
but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a cruelty
neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to catch
Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with downcast
eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what was
required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her
benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this
case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She
could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but
neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his happiness
depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not reply.
Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to have an
explanation with his mother. He first implored her to forgive him and
Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he threatened that if she
molested Sonya he would at once marry her secretly.
5345
The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her before,
replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying without his
father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she would never
receive that intriguer as her daughter.
5346
Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told his
mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time.... But
he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression of his
face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would perhaps
have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had not time to
say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the room from
the door at which she had been listening.
5347
"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.
5348
"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she said
to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a
rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.
5349
"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling," said
Natasha.
5350
Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which she
was aiming.
5351
The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's breast,
while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.
5352
Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.
5353
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment, to
retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.
5354
After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
5355
Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward
her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house and
estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had to
go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay their
departure from day to day.
5356
Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her
betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and
impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would
have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no
advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the
most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived only
in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new places and
new people that interested him. The more interesting his letters were
the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from giving her any
comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial obligation. She could
not write, because she could not conceive the possibility of expressing
sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part of what she expressed by
voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry
letters, to which she attached no importance herself, and in the rough
copies of which the countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.
5357
There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince Andrew
was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending the
winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.
5358
So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya
and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
5359
BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
5360
CHAPTER I
5361
After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any apparent
cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as before. Firmly
convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by his benefactor,
and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner man, to which he had
devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest of such a life vanished
after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and the death of Joseph
Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost at the same time. Only
the skeleton of life remained: his house, a brilliant wife who now
enjoyed the favors of a very important personage, acquaintance with all
Petersburg, and his court service with its dull formalities. And this
life suddenly seemed to Pierre unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased
keeping a diary, avoided the company of the Brothers, began going to
the Club again, drank a great deal, and came once more in touch with
the bachelor sets, leading such a life that the Countess Helene thought
it necessary to speak severely to him about it. Pierre felt that she
right, and to avoid compromising her went away to Moscow.
5362
In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded and
fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as soon as,
driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with innumerable
tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons, the Kremlin
Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh drivers and
hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who desired
nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days leisurely; when he
saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club, he
felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In Moscow he felt at peace, at
home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing gown.
5363
Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received
Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready awaiting
him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest, most
intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a heedless,
genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was always empty
because it was open to everyone.
5364
Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent societies,
gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees, Freemasons,
churches, and books- no one and nothing met with a refusal from him,
and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large sums from
him and taken him under their protection, he would have given
everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the Club without
him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa after two bottles of
Margaux he was surrounded, and talking, disputing, and joking began.
When there were quarrels, his kindly smile and well-timed jests
reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic dinners were dull and dreary
when he was not there.
5365
When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly smile,
yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive off
somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the
young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,
married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of
them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il est
charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"68 they said of him.
68
"He is charming; he has no sex."
5366
Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there were
hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.
5367
How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him to
seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then
himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a
strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the
sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of
perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated
his serfs?
5368
But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the government
a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favorite in
Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile himself to the
idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow gentlemen-in-waiting
he had so despised seven years before.
5369
Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only living
this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought of how
many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club temporarily,
with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it when not a single
tooth or hair remained.
5370
In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to him
that he was quite different and distinct from those other retired
gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were empty, stupid,
contented fellows, satisfied with their position, "while I am still
discontented and want to do something for mankind. But perhaps all
these comrades of mine struggled just like me and sought something new,
a path in life of their own, and like me were brought by force of
circumstances, society, and race- by that elemental force against which
man is powerless- to the condition I am in," said he to himself in
moments of humility; and after living some time in Moscow he no longer
despised, but began to grow fond of, to respect, and to pity his
comrades in destiny, as he pitied himself.
5371
Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment. "What
for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself in
perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to reflect anew
on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by experience that
there were no answers to these questions he made haste to turn away
from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the Club or to Apollon
Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.
5372
"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is one
of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded by
people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay homage
to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he was great,
but now that he has become a wretched comedian the Emperor Francis
wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards,
through the Catholic clergy, offer praise to God for their victory over
the French on the fourteenth of June, and the French, also through the
Catholic clergy, offer praise because on that same fourteenth of June
they defeated the Spaniards. My brother Masons swear by the blood that
they are ready to sacrifice everything for their neighbor, but they do
not give a ruble each to the collections for the poor, and they
intrigue, the Astraea Lodge against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about
an authentic Scotch carpet and a charter that nobody needs, and the
meaning of which the very man who wrote it does not understand. We all
profess the Christian law of forgiveness of injuries and love of our
neighbors, the law in honor of which we have built in Moscow forty
times forty churches- but yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and
a minister of that same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the
soldier a cross to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and
the whole of this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed
as he was to it, astonished him each time as if it were something new.
"I understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I
to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found that
they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do, and only
try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I- what is to
become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate capacity many men,
especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of
goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too
clearly to be able to take a serious part in it. Every sphere of work
was connected, in his eyes, with evil and deception. Whatever he tried
to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil and falsehood of it repulsed
him and blocked every path of activity. Yet he had to live and to find
occupation. It was too dreadful to be under the burden of these
insoluble problems, so he abandoned himself to any distraction in order
to forget them. He frequented every kind of society, drank much, bought
pictures, engaged in building, and above all- read.
5373
He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home, while
his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book and
began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping to
gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and
women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking
became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the
doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for him,
he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having poured
several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he felt a
pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his fellows, and
a readiness to respond superficially to every idea without probing it
deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did he feel dimly that the
terribly tangled skein of life which previously had terrified him was
not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always conscious of some
aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his head after dinner or
supper he chatted or listened to conversation or read. But under the
influence of wine he said to himself: "It doesn't matter. I'll get it
unraveled. I have a solution ready, but have no time now- I'll think it
all out later on!" But the later on never came.
5374
In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions appeared as
insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily picked up a book,
and if anyone came to see him he was glad.
5375
Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try hard
to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To Pierre
all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life: some in
ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in
toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine,
and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is trivial, and nothing is
important, it's all the same- only to save oneself from it as best one
can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it, that dreadful it!"
5376
CHAPTER II
5377
At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his daughter
moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor Alexander's
regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French tendency prevailed
there, and this, together with his past and his intellect and his
originality, at once made Prince Nicholas Bolkonski an object of
particular respect to the Moscovites and the center of the Moscow
opposition to the government.
5378
The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of this
the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of respectful
veneration- especially of an evening when he came in to tea in his
old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone, told his
abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and scathing
criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned house with
its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered footmen, and
the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past century) with his
gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who were reverently devoted
to him presented a majestic and agreeable spectacle. But the visitors
did not reflect that besides the couple of hours during which they saw
their host, there were also twenty-two hours in the day during which
the private and intimate life of the house continued.
5379
Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures- talks with
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and
she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not
go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her go
anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going out
himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening parties.
She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She saw the
coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received and
dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes appeared at
their house. She had no friends: during this visit to Moscow she had
been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to her. Mademoiselle
Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be quite frank, had now
become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons Princess Mary avoided
her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for the last five years, was
in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to her when they met. Just then
Julie, who by the death of her brothers had become one of the richest
heiresses in Moscow, was in the full whirl of society pleasures. She
was surrounded by young men who, she fancied, had suddenly learned to
appreciate her worth. Julie was at that stage in the life of a society
woman when she feels that her last chance of marrying has come and that
her fate must be decided now or never. On Thursdays Princess Mary
remembered with a mournful smile that she now had no one to write to,
since Julie- whose presence gave her no pleasure was here and they met
every week. Like the old emigre who declined to marry the lady with
whom he had spent his evenings for years, she regretted Julie's
presence and having no one to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no
one to talk to, no one to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow
fell to her lot just then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and
marriage was approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father
for it had not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were
quite hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the
old prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost
control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons
she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in
herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's
irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get
irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in
hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to
pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who was
already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry- that at his
slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated, raised
her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in the
corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to cry
over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her
example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner, come
to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But what
distressed the princess most of all was her father's irritability,
which was always directed against her and had of late amounted to
cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the ground all
night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water, it would
never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but this loving
despot- the more cruel because he loved her and for that reason
tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt and humiliate
her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to blame for
everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that tormented
Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his ever-increasing
intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at the first moment
of receiving the news of his son's intentions had occurred to him in
jest- that if Andrew got married he himself would marry Bourienne- had
evidently pleased him, and latterly he had persistently, and as it
seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend her, shown special endearments
to the companion and expressed his dissatisfaction with his daughter by
demonstrations of love of Bourienne.
5380
One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her father
did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle
Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her affectionately.
Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few minutes later
Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room smiling and
making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Mary hastily
wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, and
evidently unconscious of what she was doing began shouting in angry
haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice breaking: "It's horrible, vile,
inhuman, to take advantage of the weakness..." She did not finish.
"Leave my room," she exclaimed, and burst into sobs.
5381
Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she noticed
that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne should be
served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee and from
habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew furious, threw
his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to have him
conscripted for the army.
5382
"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is the
first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the prince.
"And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing Princess
Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her as you
dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this house. Go!
Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"
5383
Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
for her intervention.
5384
At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in her
soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look for his
spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not seeing them, or
would forget something that had just occurred, or take a false step
with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had noticed his
feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no visitors to
excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his napkin drop and his
shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and feeble, and I dare to
condemn him!" she thought at such moments, with a feeling of revulsion
against herself.
5385
CHAPTER III
5386
In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor- Metivier- who had
rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome, amiable
as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an extraordinarily
clever doctor. He was received in the best houses not merely as a
doctor, but as an equal.
5387
Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him
and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about
twice a week.
5388
On December 6- St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day- all Moscow
came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit no one and
to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom he gave to
Princess Mary.
5389
Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered it
proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,69 as he
told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on
that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.
He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with
everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not
to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet
absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,
and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and
loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's
arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,
Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door
through which she could hear all that passed in the study.
69
To force the guard.
5390
At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then both
voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung open, and on
the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the terrified Metivier
with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his dressing gown and
fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils of his eyes rolled
downwards.
5391
"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,
slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."
5392
Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne
who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.
5393
"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head. Keep
calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
fingers to his lips he hastened away.
5394
Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my own
house!"
5395
After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in, and
the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a spy
had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a list,
and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was that
scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he said, he
could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.
5396
"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that, understand it!
I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the room. Then, as if
afraid she might find some means of consolation, he returned and trying
to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have said this in a moment
of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and it will be carried
out- we must part; so find some place for yourself...." But he could
not restrain himself and with the virulence of which only one who loves
is capable, evidently suffering himself, he shook his fists at her and
screamed:
5397
"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door, sent for
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.
5398
At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
5399
These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with his
nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of the
younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince in
the drawing room.
5400
Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had contrived
to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his case made an
exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his house.
5401
The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
society, but his little circle- though not much talked about in town-
was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other. Boris
had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in his
presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:
5402
"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski."
5403
"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."
5404
The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty old-fashioned
drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn gathering of a
court of justice. All were silent or talked in low tones. Prince
Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary seemed even
quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were reluctant to
address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their conversation.
Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going, now relating the
latest town news, and now the latest political gossip.
5405
Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the
conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge receives a
report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word, showing that he
took heed of what was being reported to him. The tone of the
conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of what was
being done in the political world. Incidents were related evidently
confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to worse, but
whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker always
stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his criticism might
touch the sovereign himself.
5406
At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.
5407
"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said
Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times
before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the
crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't
scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep silent!
Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the Duke of
Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused, feeling
that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was impossible.
5408
"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I
might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan
estates."
5409
"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength of
character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in respectfully.
5410
He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the
honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at the
young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his mind,
evidently considering him too young.
5411
"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was surprised
how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in the casual
tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
5412
Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not understanding
why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the Note.
5413
"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so long as
its substance is forcible?"
5414
"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should be
easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.
5415
Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording of
the Note.
5416
"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up," remarked
the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing- not notes
only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a whole volume of
laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!" and he laughed
unnaturally.
5417
There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general
cleared his throat to draw attention.
5418
"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The figure
cut by the new French ambassador."
5419
"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His Majesty's
presence."
5420
"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the march
past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador took no
notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no
attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply. At
the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to address
him."
5421
All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it
was impossible to pass any judgment.
5422
"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned him
out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite of
my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing
angrily at his daughter.
5423
And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and the
reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these
reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
5424
After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to congratulate
the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.
5425
He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told her
that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision
remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his
speaking of it to her now.
5426
When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the old
men sat together.
5427
Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.
5428
He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long as we
sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into European
affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. "We ought
not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political interests are
all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only thing is to have
an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will never dare to cross
the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"
5429
"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can we
arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our youths,
look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our Kingdom of
Heaven."
5430
He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
5431
"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you turned
Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a Frenchman and a
scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their knees. I went to a
party last night, and there out of five ladies three were Roman
Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing woolwork on Sundays.
And they themselves sit there nearly naked, like the signboards at our
Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when one looks at our young people,
Prince, one would like to take Peter the Great's old cudgel out of the
museum and belabor them in the Russian way till all the nonsense jumps
out of them."
5432
All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile and
wagged his head approvingly.
5433
"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin, getting
up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to the
prince.
5434
"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and
offering his cheek to be kissed.
5435
Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.
5436
CHAPTER IV
5437
Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only wondered
whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile attitude
toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions and
amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who was
visiting them for the third time already.
5438
Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to Pierre, who
hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of the guests to
approach her after the old prince had gone out and they were left alone
in the drawing room.
5439
"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink into
an armchair beside her.
5440
"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.
5441
Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight before
him and smiled quietly.
5442
"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.
5443
"Who?"
5444
"Drubetskoy."
5445
"No, not long..."
5446
"Do you like him?"
5447
"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with her
father.
5448
"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
heiress."
5449
"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.
5450
"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I can
read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay siege to-
you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive to her."
5451
"He visits them?"
5452
"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said Pierre
with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good humored
raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his diary.
5453
"No," replied Princess Mary.
5454
"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very
melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.
5455
"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should like
to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would be a
relief. He would give me advice."
5456
"Would you marry him?"
5457
"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!" she
cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice. "Ah,
how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..." she
went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but
grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only
one thing left- to go away, but where could I go?"
5458
"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"
5459
But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst into
tears.
5460
"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any notice-
forget what I have said!"
5461
Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him;
but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said,
that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no
trouble except the one he knew of- that Prince Andrew's marriage
threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.
5462
"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the subject.
"I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting Andrew any day. I
should like them to meet here."
5463
"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring to the
old prince.
5464
Princess Mary shook her head.
5465
"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The thing is
impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first moments. I
wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her. You have
known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me honestly the
whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you think of her?-
The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so much doing this
against his father's will that I should like to know..."
5466
An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and repeated
requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on the
princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that he
should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what he felt
rather than what he thought.
5467
"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing without
knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is; I can't
analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I don't
know. That is all one can say about her."
5468
Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes, that's
what I expected and feared."
5469
"Is she clever?" she asked.
5470
Pierre considered.
5471
"I think not," he said, "and yet- yes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."
5472
Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
5473
"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."
5474
"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.
5475
Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her
future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to
accustom the old prince to her.
5476
CHAPTER V
5477
Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg, so
with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered
between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though
Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than
Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to her.
When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had answered
at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently not
listening to what he was saying.
5478
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
manner peculiar to herself.
5479
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself not
merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She was
confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a very
wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew the less
dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could associate
with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and the animated
company that assembled at her house, without incurring any obligation.
A man who would have been afraid ten years before of going every day to
the house when there was a girl of seventeen there, for fear of
compromising her and committing himself, would now go boldly every day
and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a sexless acquaintance.
5480
That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and hospitable
in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner parties, a
large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day, supping at
midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never missed a
ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of the latest
fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be disillusioned about
everything and told everyone that she did not believe either in
friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life, and expected peace
only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who has suffered a great
disappointment, like a girl who has either lost the man she loved or
been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had happened
to her she was regarded in that light, and had even herself come to
believe that she had suffered much in life. This melancholy, which did
not prevent her amusing herself, did not hinder the young people who
came to her house from passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who
came to the house paid his tribute to the melancholy mood of the
hostess, and then amused himself with society gossip, dancing,
intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which were in vogue at the
Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among them Boris, entered
more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with these she had prolonged
conversations in private on the vanity of all worldly things, and to
them she showed her albums filled with mournful sketches, maxims, and
verses.
5481
To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship
as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him
her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic
trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."
5482
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
5483
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.70
70
Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
5484
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
5485
Julia said this was charming
5486
"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said
to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book.
"It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and
despair, showing the possibility of consolation."
5487
In reply Boris wrote these lines:
5488
Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,71
71
Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
5489
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
5490
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
5491
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
5492
And mingle a secret sweetness
5493
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
5494
For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read
Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who understood
one another in a world of indifferent people.
5495
Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing cards
with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry (she was to
have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests). Anna Mikhaylovna
regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie
with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
5496
"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to
the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He has
suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to the
mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of Julie
latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving her? She is
an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And how I pity her
mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and letters
from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor thing, has
no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"
5497
Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had to
say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
Nizhegorod estates.
5498
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and
was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her,
for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and a
feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole
days at the Karagins', and every day on thinking the matter over told
himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie's presence,
looking at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist
eyes, and her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from
melancholy to an unnatural rapture of married bliss, Boris could not
utter the decisive words, though in imagination he had long regarded
himself as the possessor of those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had
apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw Boris'
indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was
repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied
her with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from
love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not
long before Boris' departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just
as Boris' leave of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his
appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and
Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very
attentive to Kuragin.
5499
"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him married
to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for her. What do
you think of it, my dear?"
5500
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all the
revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally
apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and
especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris. He drove
to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing. Julie met him in
a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had enjoyed
yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though Boris had come
intentionally to speak of his love and therefore meant to be tender, he
began speaking irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how easily women
can turn from sadness to joy, and how their moods depend solely on who
happens to be paying court to them. Julie was offended and replied that
it was true that a woman needs variety, and the same thing over and
over again would weary anyone.
5501
"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but at
that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have to
leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly
wasted his efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen.
5502
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to
avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:
5503
"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."
5504
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability
had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed
on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as not to see
her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and must be
finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:
5505
"You know my feelings for you!"
5506
There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and
self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on such
occasions- that he loved her and had never loved any other woman more
than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and Nizhegorod forests
she could demand this, and she received what she demanded.
5507
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant
wedding.
5508
CHAPTER VI
5509
At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha and
Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was
impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in Moscow
could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been heated that
winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the countess was
not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya Dmitrievna
Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.
5510
Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya
Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya Dmitrievna
lived alone. She had already married off her daughter, and her sons
were all in the service.
5511
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach to
others for any weakness, passion, or temptation- the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she
played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new
book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and
went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important persons in
the town.
5512
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the pulley of
the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostovs and their
servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her
nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with a
stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she was
angry with the travelers and would immediately turn them out, had she
not at the same time been giving careful instructions to the servants
for the accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.
5513
"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by the
hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she shouted
to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half frozen, I'm
sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she added,
turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her slightly
contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.
5514
When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and
tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna kissed them
all in due order.
5515
"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was high
time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old man is
here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his
aquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at
Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want
tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her
fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here with
her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is here too,
with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping after him.
He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"- and she pointed to the
girls- "tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian shrine of the
Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the Super-Rogue's. I suppose
you'll have everything new. Don't judge by me: sleeves nowadays are
this size! The other day young Princess Irina Vasilevna came to see me;
she was an awful sight- looked as if she had put two barrels on her
arms. You know not a day passes now without some new fashion.... And
what have you to do yourself?" she asked the count sternly.
5516
"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you
will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a
day, and leave my lassies with you."
5517
"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in Chancery!
I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet them a
bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and favorite,
Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.
5518
Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at a
loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the
room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.
5519
"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed. You've
hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known him since
he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the ground.
Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now listen!
You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's marrying. The
old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a child and can
shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family against a
father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly. You're a
clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use your wits.
Then all will be well."
5520
Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her love
of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human affairs
that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince Andrew, he
loved her only, and was to come one of these days and take her. She
wanted nothing more.
5521
"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but this
one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two together.
Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice and
affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll find
you already know his sister and father and are liked by them. Am I
right or not? Won't that be best?"
5522
"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.
5523
CHAPTER VII
5524
Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out cheerfully
on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well remembered the last
interview he had had with the old prince at the time of the enrollment,
when in reply to an invitation to dinner he had had to listen to an
angry reprimand for not having provided his full quota of men. Natasha,
on the other hand, having put on her best gown, was in the highest
spirits. "They can't help liking me," she thought. "Everybody always
has liked me, and I am so willing to do anything they wish, so ready to
be fond of him- for being his father- and of her- for being his sister-
that there is no reason for them not to like me..."
5525
They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and entered
the vestibule.
5526
"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest, half
in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on
entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the
prince and princess were at home.
5527
When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the princess
begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the visitors
was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter with
special politeness and showed them to the princess' room. The princess,
looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in patches, ran in to
meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly trying to appear
cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess Mary did not like
Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed, frivolously gay and
vain. She did not at all realize that before having seen her future
sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by involuntary envy of her
beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by jealousy of her brother's
love for her. Apart from this insuperable antipathy to her, Princess
Mary was agitated just then because on the Rostovs' being announced,
the old prince had shouted that he did not wish to see them, that
Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but they were not to be
admitted to him. She had decided to receive them, but feared lest the
prince might at any moment indulge in some freak, as he seemed much
upset by the Rostovs' visit.
5528
"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said the
count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old prince
might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one another... very
sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few more commonplace
remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my Natasha in your hands
for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive round to see Anna
Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square, and then I'll come back
for her."
5529
The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told his
daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk to
one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold and
defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of anybody. The
princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only begged
him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he departed.
5530
Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary- who wished
to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha- Mademoiselle Bourienne remained in
the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements and theaters.
Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had noticed in the
anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the unnatural manner of
the princess who- she thought- was making a favor of receiving her, and
so everything displeased her. She did not like Princess Mary, whom she
thought very plain, affected, and dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into
herself and involuntarily assumed an offhand air which alienated
Princess Mary still more. After five minutes of irksome, constrained
conversation, they heard the sound of slippered feet rapidly
approaching. Princess Mary looked frightened.
5531
The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white
nightcap, came in.
5532
"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am
not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not know,
madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with a
visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg you
to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at her
father or at Natasha.
5533
Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
5534
"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not know,"
muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from head to foot
he went out.
5535
Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition. Natasha
and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the longer they
did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater grew their
antipathy to one another.
5536
When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened to
get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought
Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary. She
knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been unable to
say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and because,
without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of the
marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess Mary
went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with a
deep sigh:
5537
"Wait, I must..."
5538
Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
5539
"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am glad
my brother has found happiness...."
5540
She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha noticed
this and guessed its reason.
5541
"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now," she
said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears
choking her.
5542
"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she
was out of the room.
5543
They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day. She sat
in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing. Sonya
stood beside her, kissing her hair.
5544
"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you? It
will all pass, Natasha."
5545
"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."
5546
"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should you
mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.
5547
Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed
her wet face against her.
5548
"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-
"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he come?..."
5549
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how the
prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how upset
Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count
and the other guests.
5550
CHAPTER VIII
5551
That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna
had taken a box.
5552
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya Dmitrievna's
kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready
dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large
mirror there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more
sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
5553
"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I
would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how I see those
eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister matter to
me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his
smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of him;
not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I
can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!" and she turned
away from the glass, making an effort not to cry. "And how can Sonya
love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?"
thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came in quite ready, with a fan
in her hand. "No, she's altogether different. I can't!"
5554
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the theater, its wheels
squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya, holding up their dresses,
jumped out quickly. The count got out helped by the footmen, and,
passing among men and women who were entering and the program sellers,
they all three went along the corridor to the first row of boxes.
Through the closed doors the music was already audible.
5555
"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.
5556
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered before
their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of feminine envy
at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the overture was being
played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with Sonya and sat down,
scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite. A sensation she had not
experienced for a long time- that of hundreds of eyes looking at her
bare arms and neck- suddenly affected her both agreeably and
disagreeably and called up a whole crowd of memories, desires and
emotions associated with that feeling.
5557
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Rostov
who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general
attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's engagement to
Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in the country ever
since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who was making one of
the best matches in Russia.
5558
Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the country, and
that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly pretty. She
struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and beauty, combined
with her indifference to everything about her. Her black eyes looked at
the crowd without seeking anyone, and her delicate arm, bare to above
the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the box, while, evidently
unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in time to the music,
crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina," said Sonya, "with her
mother, isn't it?"
5559
"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked the
count.
5560
"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!"
5561
"The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once that
they're engaged...."
5562
"Drubetskoy has proposed?"
5563
"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs'
box.
5564
Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were turned
and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on her face
and a string of pearls round her thick red neck- which Natasha knew was
covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and leaning over with
an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome smoothly brushed head. He
looked the Rostovs from under his brows and said something, smiling, to
his betrothed.
5565
"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And he
no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble
themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
them."
5566
Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and with a
happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their box was
pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which Natasha knew
so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly remembered all
that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.
5567
"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
better not think of it- not till he comes back!" she told herself, and
began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the
stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the
orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
5568
The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her
former adorer.
5569
"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?" he
asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"
5570
"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away from
there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling prince in
Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the Moscow ladies
are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does it! We never
hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him, they offer
him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov and Anatole
Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."
5571
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string of
large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk dress
and took a long time settling into her place.
5572
Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and pearls
and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the pearls.
While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time the lady
looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and smiled.
She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the count, who knew
everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
5573
"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll call
to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls with
me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used to
forget us. Is he here?"
5574
"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively at
Natasha.
5575
Count Rostov resumed his seat.
5576
"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.
5577
"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily fall in
love with."
5578
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the conductor
tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in the stalls,
and the curtain rose.
5579
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent, and
all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and all the
women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole attention with
eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.
5580
CHAPTER IX
5581
The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides was
some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a cloth
stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls in red
bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk dress sat
apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of green cardboard
was glued. They all sang something. When they had finished their song
the girl in white went up to the prompter's box and a man with tight
silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding a plume and a dagger,
went up to her and began singing, waving his arms about.
5582
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang, then
they both paused while the orchestra played and the man fingered the
hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to start singing
with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater began clapping
and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who represented
lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and bowing.
5583
After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood, all
this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow the
opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted cardboard
and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke, and sang so
strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was all meant to
represent, but it was so pretentiously false and unnatural that she
first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused at them. She looked
at the faces of the audience, seeking in them the same sense of
ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but they all seemed
attentive to what was happening on the stage, and expressed delight
which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has to be like this!"
she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the rows of pomaded
heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women in the boxes,
especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently quite unclothed-
sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her eyes off the stage. And
feeling the bright light that flooded the whole place and the warm air
heated by the crowd, Natasha little by little began to pass into a
state of intoxication she had not experienced for a long while. She did
not realize who and where she was, nor what was going on before her. As
she looked and thought, the strangest fancies unexpectedly and
disconnectedly passed through her mind: the idea occurred to her of
jumping onto the edge of the box and singing the air the actress was
singing, then she wished to touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting
not far from her, then to lean over to Helene and tickle her.
5584
At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song, a
door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box
creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's
Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the
newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an
exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a
self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom she
had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was now in
an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot. He moved
with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous had he not
been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn such an
expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though the
performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the carpeted
gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his handsome
perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he approached his
sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her box, nodded to
her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a motion toward
Natasha.
5585
"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did not
exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of his
lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and sat
down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and offhand
way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He winked at him
gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra screen.
5586
"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And how
handsome they both are!"
5587
Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some intrigue
of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just because
he had said she was "charmante."
5588
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,
going out and coming in.
5589
Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations very
simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile conveyed
to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding, and went
away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.
5590
The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and
Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
5591
Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
5592
During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in front
of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha knew
he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even
turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its
most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre
appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their
arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at
and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew animated
and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box. When he
got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to her for a
long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a man's voice in
Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it was Kuragin. She
turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed straight into her
eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that it seemed strange to
be so near him, to look at him like that, to be so sure he admired her,
and not to be acquainted with him.
5593
In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there was
a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were raised
over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep notes
while many people appeared from right and left wearing black cloaks and
holding things like daggers in their hands. They began waving their
arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging away the maiden
who had been in white and was now in light blue. They did not drag her
away at once, but sang with her for a long time and then at last
dragged her off, and behind the scenes something metallic was struck
three times and everyone knelt down and sang a prayer. All these things
were repeatedly interrupted by the enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
5594
During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she saw
Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her
and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.
5595
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the
Rostovs' box- her whole bosom completely exposed- beckoned the old
count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.
5596
"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"
5597
Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so pleased
by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with pleasure.
5598
"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it you're
not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"
5599
Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a fascinating
woman. She could say what she did not think- especially what was
flattering- quite simply and naturally.
5600
"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I am not
staying here long this time- nor are you- I will try to amuse them. I
have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get to know
you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely smile. "I had
heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard he is getting
married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski, Prince Andrew
Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis, implying that she knew
of his relation to Natasha. To get better acquainted she asked that one
of the young ladies should come into her box for the rest of the
performance, and Natasha moved over to it.
5601
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles
were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the
walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a queen. The
king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang something badly
and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had been first in
white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and stood beside
the throne with her hair down. She sang something mournfully,
addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely, and men and
women with bare legs came in from both sides and began dancing all
together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily and one of
the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating from the
others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice, returned to the
middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking one foot rapidly
against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and shouted "bravo!"
Then one of the men went into a corner of the stage. The cymbals and
horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly, and this man with bare
legs jumped very high and waved his feet about very rapidly. (He was
Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles a year for this art.)
Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries began clapping and
shouting with all their might, and the man stopped and began smiling
and bowing to all sides. Then other men and women danced with bare
legs. Then the king again shouted to the sound of music, and they all
began singing. But suddenly a storm came on, chromatic scales and
diminished sevenths were heard in the orchestra, everyone ran off,
again dragging one of their number away, and the curtain dropped. Once
more there was a terrible noise and clatter among the audience, and
with rapturous faces everyone began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!"
Natasha no longer thought this strange. She look about with pleasure,
smiling joyfully.
5602
"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.
5603
"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.
5604
CHAPTER X
5605
During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.
5606
"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
5607
Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
had long wished to have this happiness- ever since the Naryshkins' ball
in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing
her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with women than among
men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and
agreeably struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this
man about whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his
smile was most naive, cheerful, and good-natured.
5608
Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.
5609
"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as an
old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume tournament;
you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet
at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said he.
5610
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, her
neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was
enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt
that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his
eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking into
his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier
of modesty she had always felt between herself and other men. She did
not know how it was that within five minutes she had come to feel
herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she feared he
might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck.
They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that they were closer
to one another than she had ever been to any man. Natasha kept turning
to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it all meant, but Helene
was engaged in conversation with a general and did not answer her look,
and her father's eyes said nothing but what they always said: "Having a
good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"
5611
During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's prominent
eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to break the
silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.
5612
"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant ce
sont les jolies femmes,72 isn't that so? But now I like it
very much indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come
to the costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand
to her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the
prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a
pledge!"
72
Are the pretty women.
5613
Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
he was there, behind, so close behind her.
5614
"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just as
he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with
horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
5615
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natasha
went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.
5616
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw.
She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom
she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
putting Natasha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
smiling tenderly.
5617
Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over
what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she
was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera,
she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.
5618
"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?" She sat
for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to realize
what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand what had
happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure, and
terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the
bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly naked
Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried "bravo!"- there in
the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear and simple; but
now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. "What is it? What was
that terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am
feeling now?" she thought.
5619
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all
she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views
would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a
confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by
herself.
5620
"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.
Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.
"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to
repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why
isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some
instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing had
happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had
perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole conversation
with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and tender smile of
that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.
5621
CHAPTER XI
5622
Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent him
away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand rubles
a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more, which his
creditors demanded from his father.
5623
His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for
the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as adjutant
to the commander in chief- a post his father had procured for him- and
would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to him
Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.
5624
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's
house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and
gave him money under the guise of loans.
5625
As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that he
slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses- with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at Danilov's
or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through, outvying
everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the best
society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies, and
he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run after
the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most of
them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got married
two years before- a fact known only to his most intimate friends. At
that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish landowner of
small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole had very soon
abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to send to his
father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off as a
bachelor.
5626
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of considering
how his actions might affect others or what the consequences of this or
that action of his might be. He was convinced that, as a duck is so
made that it must live in water, so God had made him such that he must
spend thirty thousand rubles a year and always occupy a prominent
position in society. He believed this so firmly that others, looking at
him, were persuaded of it too and did not refuse him either a leading
place in society or money, which he borrowed from anyone and everyone
and evidently would not repay.
5627
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning. He was
not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still less could
he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed his father by
spoiling his own career, and he laughed at distinctions of all kinds.
He was not mean, and did not refuse anyone who asked of him. All he
cared about was gaiety and women, and as according to his ideas there
was nothing dishonorable in these tastes, and he was incapable of
considering what the gratification of his tastes entailed for others,
he honestly considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised
rogues and bad people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head
high.
5628
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope of
forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."
5629
Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling, and
dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin and
made use of him for his own ends.
5630
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and audacity.
Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and connections
as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set, made use of him
and amused himself at his expense without letting the other feel it.
Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole, the very process of
dominating another's will was in itself a pleasure, a habit, and a
necessity to Dolokhov.
5631
Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the
opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was
incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he
never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
5632
"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied Dolokhov.
5633
"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"
5634
"You'd better wait till she's married...."
5635
"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"
pursued Anatole.
5636
"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said Dolokhov
who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"
5637
"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a good-humored
laugh.
5638
CHAPTER XII
5639
The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came to see
them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something which they
concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking about the old
prince and planning something, and this disquieted and offended her.
She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice that day sent a
manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he had come. He had
not arrived. She suffered more now than during her first days in
Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now added the
unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess Mary and the old
prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not understand the
cause. She continually fancied that either he would never come or that
something would happen to her before he came. She could no longer think
of him by herself calmly and continuously as she had done before. As
soon as she began to think of him, the recollection of the old prince,
of Princess Mary, of the theater, and of Kuragin mingled with her
thoughts. The question again presented itself whether she was not
guilty, whether she had not already broken faith with Prince Andrew,
and again she found herself recalling to the minutest detail every
word, every gesture, and every shade in the play of expression on the
face of the man who had been able to arouse in her such an
incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To the family Natasha seemed
livelier than usual, but she was far less tranquil and happy than
before.
5640
On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at her
parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the graves of
victims of the plague.
5641
"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently priding
herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every where.
We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently and with
dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there in giving
concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just self-indulgence!"
5642
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her whole
house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church. At
her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had vodka
and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was the
holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern face, which
on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
5643
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a servant
announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna rose with a
stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid calls, and
announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas Bolkonski to have
an explanation with him about Natasha.
5644
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited on
the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having shut
herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied herself trying
on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice without sleeves and
only tacked together, and was turning her head to see in the glass how
the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room the animated sounds of
her father's voice and another's- a woman's- that made her flush. It
was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off the bodice before the door
opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a purple velvet gown with a
high collar, came into the room beaming with good-humored amiable
smiles.
5645
"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha. "Charming! No,
this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said she to Count
Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in Moscow and go
nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George will recite at my
house tonight and there'll be some people, and if you don't bring your
lovely girls- who are prettier than Mademoiselle George- I won't know
you! My husband is away in Tver or I would send him to fetch you. You
must come. You positively must! Between eight and nine."
5646
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely. She
did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually praising
Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised them, as
well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze," which she had
received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one like it.
5647
"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.
5648
A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as if
she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess Bezukhova
who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and important and was
now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt almost in love with
this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind. Helene for her part was
sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to give her a good time.
Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha together, and she was
calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The idea of throwing her
brother and Natasha together amused her.
5649
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha
for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her own
way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs she
called her protegee aside.
5650
"My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died of laughter- he ate
nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly, quite madly,
in love with you, my dear."
5651
Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
5652
"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You must
certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a reason
to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your fiance
would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to death."
5653
"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre- that good
Pierre- have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right." And
again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now seemed
simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind, and
evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought Natasha,
gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.
5654
Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly. In
answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all right
and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of Countess
Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening, Marya Dmitrievna
remarked:
5655
"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise
you to; however, if you've promised- go. It will divert your thoughts,"
she added, addressing Natasha.
5656
CHAPTER XIII
5657
Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a good
many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count Rostov
was displeased to see that the company consisted almost entirely of men
and women known for the freedom of their conduct. Mademoiselle George
was standing in a corner of the drawing room surrounded by young men.
There were several Frenchmen present, among them Metivier who from the
time Helene reached Moscow had been an intimate in her house. The count
decided not to sit down to cards or let his girls out of his sight and
to get away as soon as Mademoiselle George's performance was over.
5658
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and followed
her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same feeling she had
had at the opera- gratified vanity at his admiration of her and fear at
the absence of a moral barrier between them.
5659
Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of her
beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George went
out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people began
arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a chair for
Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count, who never
lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down behind her.
5660
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red shawl
draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for her, and
assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was audible.
5661
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience and
began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for her
son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.
5662
"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.
5663
Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt herself
again completely borne away into this strange senseless world- so
remote from her old world- a world in which it was impossible to know
what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat Anatole,
and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened sense of
expectancy.
5664
After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
5665
"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had also
risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
5666
"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following Natasha.
He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. "You are
enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased..."
5667
"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.
5668
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and
Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
5669
The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for a
valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she
was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which she
also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by
themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened eyes
to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate
look and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she
had to say. She lowered her eyes.
5670
"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another," she
said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
5671
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
5672
"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I am
madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."
5673
Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and the
Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to
remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt
his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father
to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Helene
had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, and that
she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had
disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said
in a tender voice:
5674
"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see
you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.
5675
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she
saw nothing but them.
5676
"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"
5677
"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.
5678
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt
herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her dress
were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then, red and
trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved
toward the door.
5679
"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.
5680
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her
what had happened and to which she could find no answer.
5681
"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.
5682
Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went away
without staying for supper.
5683
After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was tormented
by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew.
She loved Prince Andrew- she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved
him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. "Else how
could all this have happened?" thought she. "If, after that, I could
return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to
that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is
kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I
to do if I love him and the other one too?" she asked herself, unable
to find an answer to these terrible questions.
5684
CHAPTER XIV
5685
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna appeared,
and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking uneasily at
everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance
directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.
5686
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat down in
her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.
5687
"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is my
advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"
5688
"Well, and he?" asked the count.
5689
"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use of
talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
to Otradnoe... and wait there."
5690
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.
5691
"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now- there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
you."
5692
Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better to
visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding,
against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.
5693
"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
her," said the old count.
5694
"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he
won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for something
in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing
to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after you. Though I don't
like letting you go, it is the best way. So go, with God's blessing!"
5695
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed it to
Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
5696
"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
afraid you might think that she does not like you."
5697
"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.
5698
"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.
5699
"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied Natasha
boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold and angry
resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her more intently
and to frown.
5700
"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is true!
Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room to
read Princess Mary's letter.
5701
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the misunderstanding
that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's feelings might
be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not help loving her as
the one chosen by her brother, for whose happiness she was ready to
sacrifice everything.
5702
"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is ill-disposed
toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be forgiven; but
he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes his son happy."
Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time when she could see
her again.
5703
After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to
answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all that
had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has happened, and
now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the letter she had
begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I really? That's
awful... and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she went to Sonya
and began sorting patterns with her.
5704
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess Mary's
letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it be that
all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that went
before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its former
strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly
pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of happiness
with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and at the same
time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of yesterday's
interview with Anatole.
5705
"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in
complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only," she
thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it from
him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is spoiled.
But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's love, in
which I have lived so long?"
5706
"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a letter.
5707
"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only that
it was a letter from him- from the man she loved. Yes, she loved him,
or else how could that have happened which had happened? And how could
she have a love letter from him in her hand?
5708
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter which
Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she found in it
an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
5709
"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you or
to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he went
on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him- for this
there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that if she
loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power could
hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her away and
carry her off to the ends of the earth.
5710
"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for the
twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each word of
it.
5711
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and proposed
to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache, remained at
home.
5712
CHAPTER XV
5713
On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and to
her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open on
the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up and read
it.
5714
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in her
face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find it. Her
face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep herself
from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and agitation, sat
down in an armchair and burst into tears.
5715
"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she have
left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go to such
lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What will
Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is the
meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it
was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
thing!"
5716
Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning her
face.
5717
"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.
5718
Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.
5719
"Ah, you're back?"
5720
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment of
awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
5721
"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.
5722
"Yes," answered Sonya softly.
5723
Natasha smiled rapturously.
5724
"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you
any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he writes...
Sonya..."
5725
Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.
5726
"And Bolkonski?" she asked.
5727
"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You don't
know what love is...."
5728
"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"
5729
Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not grasp
the question.
5730
"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.
5731
"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just listen!"
said Natasha, with momentary vexation.
5732
"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How is
it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you have
only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're joking!
In three days to forget everything and so..."
5733
"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced
and kissed her.
5734
"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it too,
but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as before.
As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his slave, and that
I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave! Whatever he orders I shall
do. You don't understand that. What can I do? What can I do, Sonya?"
cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened expression.
5735
"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it like
this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so far?"
she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
5736
"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
understand? I love him!"
5737
"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.
5738
"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
separated...."
5739
When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity for
her friend.
5740
"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"
5741
Natasha did not answer her questions.
5742
"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me," Natasha
entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such matters! I have
confided in you...."
5743
"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked Sonya.
"Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince Andrew gave
you complete freedom- if it is really so; but I don't believe it!
Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can be?"
5744
Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know
how to answer it.
5745
"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"
5746
Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
5747
"If there were reasons..." she began.
5748
But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
5749
"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
understand?" she cried.
5750
"Does he love you?"
5751
"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her
friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you
have seen him."
5752
"But if he is dishonorable?"
5753
"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.
5754
"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions or
cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to
him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.
5755
"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.
5756
"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think of
your father and of Nicholas."
5757
"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you say he
is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed Natasha. "Go
away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go, for God's sake
go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily, in a voice of
despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into sobs and ran from
the room.
5758
Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote that
answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all the
morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she
had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At
that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.
5759
On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on Wednesday
the count went with the prospective purchaser to his estate near
Moscow.
5760
On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there. At
that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she spoke
to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through dinner she was
more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was the first to
begin the explanation Sonya expected.
5761
"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to be
praised. "We have had an explanation today."
5762
"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're
not angry with me! Tell me everything- the whole truth. What did he
say?"
5763
Natasha became thoughtful.
5764
"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I had
promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."
5765
Sonya sighed sorrowfully.
5766
"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.
5767
"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why do
you think so badly of me?"
5768
"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."
5769
"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what a man
he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think badly of
anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"
5770
Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her. The
more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face
became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.
5771
"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I haven't
spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him, Natasha.
Why this secrecy?"
5772
"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.
5773
"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"
5774
"Afraid of what?"
5775
"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely, and was
herself horrified at what she had said.
5776
Anger again showed in Natasha's face.
5777
"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not your
business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me alone, leave
me alone! I hate you!"
5778
Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.
5779
"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran out
of the room.
5780
Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the same
expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the house,
taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once abandoning them.
5781
Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her
out of her sight.
5782
The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha sat
by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting something and
that she made a sign to an officer who drove past, whom Sonya took to
be Anatole.
5783
Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed that
at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and unnatural
state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she did not
finish, and laughed at everything.
5784
After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly waiting
to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at the door
learned that another letter had been delivered.
5785
Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some dreadful
plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did not let
her in.
5786
"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in her
face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya remembered.
"Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what am I to do?"
thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly indicated that
Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is away. What am I to
do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation? But what is there to
oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrew asked me to in
case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she really has already refused
Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess Mary yesterday. And Uncle is
away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who had such faith in Natasha seemed
to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway," thought Sonya as she stood in the
dark passage, "now or never I must prove that I remember the family's
goodness to me and that I love Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for
three nights I'll not leave this passage and will hold her back by
force and will and not let the family be disgraced," thought she.
5787
CHAPTER XVI
5788
Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie Rostova's
abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by Dolokhov a few
days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening at Natasha's
door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been put into
execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the back
porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka he
would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of
Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a
marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to wait
which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they would
hasten abroad with post horses.
5789
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand rubles
he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand borrowed with
Dolokhov's help.
5790
Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a retired petty
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an unbounded
affection for Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's front room.
5791
In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling cloak
and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some bundles of
paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to and fro from
the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the study to the
room behind, where his French valet and others were packing the last of
his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and noting something down.
5792
"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."
5793
"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.
5794
"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water for
you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said Dolokhov,
showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"
5795
"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to Dolokhov
and looking straight before him with a smile that did not leave his
face.
5796
Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an ironic
smile:
5797
"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"
5798
"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only knew...
it's the devil knows what!"
5799
"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously. It's
no joke, this plot you've hatched."
5800
"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left the
room.
5801
Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole had
gone out.
5802
"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm talking
sense. Come here, come here!"
5803
Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
5804
"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why should I
joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything for you? Who
found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the money? I did it
all."
5805
"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And Anatole
sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
5806
"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
dangerous business, and if you think about it- a stupid business. Well,
you'll carry her off- all right! Will they let it stop at that? It will
come out that you're already married. Why, they'll have you in the
criminal court...."
5807
"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a grimace.
"Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the partiality
dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have reached by their
own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already put to Dolokhov a
hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I have come to this
conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went on, crooking one
finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it is valid, no
matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it. Isn't that so? And
don't talk to me, don't, don't."
5808
"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a
mess!"
5809
"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the
room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of
Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?
Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.
"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in
French. "What?"
5810
Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
looked at him- evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of him.
5811
"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"
5812
"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a thought of
the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why talk
nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"
5813
Anatole went into the back room.
5814
"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the servants.
5815
Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to bring
something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went into
the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.
5816
Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and smiling
pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to himself.
5817
"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from
the other room.
5818
"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.
5819
"Come! Balaga is here."
5820
Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous troyka
driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and had given
them good service with his troykas. More than once when Anatole's
regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in the
evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back again
the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape when
pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town with
gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than once in
their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles in the
streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the consequences
by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more than one horse
in their service. More than once they had beaten him, and more than
once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira, which he loved;
and he knew more than one thing about each of them which would long ago
have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They often called Balaga into
their orgies and made him drink and dance at the gypsies', and more
than one thousand rubles of their money had passed through his hands.
In their service he risked his skin and his life twenty times a year,
and in their service had lost more horses than the money he had from
them would buy. But he liked them; liked that mad driving at twelve
miles an hour, liked upsetting a driver or running down a pedestrian,
and flying at full gallop through the Moscow streets. He liked to hear
those wild, tipsy shouts behind him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was
impossible to go any faster. He liked giving a painful lash on the neck
to some peasant who, more dead than alive, was already hurrying out of
his way. "Real gentlemen!" he considered them.
5821
Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga bargained,
charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and rarely drove
himself, generally letting his young men do so. But with "his
gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded anything for his
work. Only a couple of times a year- when he knew from their valets
that they had money in hand- he would turn up of a morning quite sober
and with a deep bow would ask them to help him. The gentlemen always
made him sit down.
5822
"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he would
say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go to the
fair."
5823
And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a
thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
5824
Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck, glittering
little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine, dark-blue, silk-lined
cloth coat over a sheepskin.
5825
On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the front
corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a small, black
hand.
5826
"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.
5827
"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"
5828
"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand to
Anatole who had just come in.
5829
"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's
shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....
What horses have you come with? Eh?"
5830
"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.
5831
"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there in
three hours. Eh?"
5832
"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.
5833
"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
suddenly rolling his eyes.
5834
"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my gentlemen
anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast we'll go!"
5835
"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."
5836
"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.
5837
"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."
5838
"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
glass of Madeira for him.
5839
The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After refusing it
for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with a red silk
handkerchief he took out of his cap.
5840
"And when are we to start, your excellency?"
5841
"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"
5842
"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be there
in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven hours? I
think you remember that, your excellency?"
5843
"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole, smilingly
at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed rapturously at him
with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka, it took one's
breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of loaded sleighs
and drove right over two of them. Eh?"
5844
"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd
harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went
on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those
animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew numb
in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- 'Catch hold
yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom of
the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them on,
there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils took
us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."
5845
CHAPTER XVII
5846
Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later wearing a
fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily set on one
side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having looked in a mirror,
and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he had assumed before it,
he lifted a glass of wine.
5847
"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!" said
Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a moment
"...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the others.
5848
Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to make
something touching and solemn out of this address to his comrades. He
spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest slightly swayed
one leg.
5849
"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time- now
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying his
glass flung it on the floor.
5850
"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and wiped his
mouth with his handkerchief.
5851
Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
5852
"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
5853
"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.
5854
Balaga was about to leave the room.
5855
"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
That's the way."
5856
They shut the door and all sat down.
5857
"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.
5858
Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
went out into the vestibule.
5859
"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll rush
out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if you
delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's frozen
in a minute and must go back- but you wrap the fur cloak round her
first thing and carry her to the sleigh."
5860
The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.
5861
"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he shouted
so that his voice rang far through the rooms.
5862
A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black eyes
and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a sable
mantle on her arm.
5863
"Here, I don't grudge it- take it!" she said, evidently afraid of her
master and yet regretful of her cloak.
5864
Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over Matrena, and
wrapped her up in it.
5865
"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the
collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.
"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to meet
the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant smile was
seen.
5866
"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my revels
here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,
Matrena, wish me luck!"
5867
"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her gypsy
accent.
5868
Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers were
holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and holding
his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and Dolokhov
got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated themselves in
the other sleigh.
5869
"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.
5870
"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka tore
down the Nikitski Boulevard.
5871
"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga
and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be
heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.
5872
After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old Konyusheny
Street.
5873
The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and Anatole
and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the gate
Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant ran out.
5874
"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out directly,"
said she.
5875
Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.
5876
He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.
5877
"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
intercepting any retreat.
5878
"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless whisper.
5879
"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."
5880
"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"
5881
Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and
was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With a
last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when
Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,
and ran back with him to the troyka.
5882
CHAPTER XVIII
5883
Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made her
confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she read it
and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.
5884
"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."
5885
Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but tearless
eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the yard porter to
admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but not to let them
out again, and having told the footman to bring them up to her, she
seated herself in the drawing room to await the abductors.
5886
When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run away
again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for God's
sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna unlocked the
door and went in without giving her an answer.... "Disgusting,
abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only sorry for her
father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath. "Hard as it may be,
I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and will hide it from the
count." She entered the room with resolute steps. Natasha lying on the
sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and she did not stir. She was in
just the same position in which Marya Dmitrievna had left her.
5887
"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I
speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when
I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd
treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will conceal
it."
5888
Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved with
noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna glanced
round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.
5889
"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said in
her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.
5890
She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward her.
Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how Natasha
looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed, her
cheeks sunken.
5891
"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious effort
and sinking down again into her former position.
5892
"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie still,
stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't tell you
how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your father comes
back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"
5893
Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.
5894
"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"
5895
"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.
5896
"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of this,
will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he challenges
him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"
5897
"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who asked you
to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and looking
malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.
5898
"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry again.
"Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to the
house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing girl?...
Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't have
found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a
scoundrel, a wretch- that's a fact!"
5899
"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If you
hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it? Sonya,
why?... Go away!"
5900
And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which people
bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned. Marya
Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:
5901
"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw herself
back on the sofa.
5902
Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on
her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that
nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would
undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had
happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under
her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some
lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.
5903
"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room
supposing Natasha to be asleep.
5904
But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open eyes she
looked straight before her. All that night she did not sleep or weep
and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her several times.
5905
Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time for
lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the affair with
the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was nothing to
keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess whom he missed.
Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had been very unwell
the day before and that they had sent for the doctor, but that she was
better now. Natasha had not left her room that morning. With compressed
and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she sat at the window, uneasily
watching the people who drove past and hurriedly glancing round at
anyone who entered the room. She was evidently expecting news of him
and that he would come or would write to her.
5906
When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the sound
of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and malevolent
expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What is the matter
with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.
5907
After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."
5908
In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so dejected
and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she assured him
that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry. Marya Dmitrievna
confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had happened. From the
pretense of illness, from his daughter's distress, and by the
embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly
that something had gone wrong during his absence, but it was so
terrible for him to think that anything disgraceful had happened to his
beloved daughter, and he so prized his own cheerful tranquillity, that
he avoided inquiries and tried to assure himself that nothing
particularly had happened; and he was only dissatisfied that her
indisposition delayed their return to the country.
5909
CHAPTER XIX
5910
From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to go
away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs came
to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to carry out
his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's widow, who
had long since promised to hand over to him some papers of her deceased
husband's.
5911
When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre had
been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling for her
was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's fiancee.
Yet some fate constantly threw them together.
5912
"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he as
he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew would
hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the house.
5913
On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.
5914
"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head. In a
sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering the
dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin dashed
past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of military
dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver collar and his
head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his white-plumed hat,
tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded hair besprinkled
with powdery snow.
5915
"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees nothing
beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so he is
always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give to be like
him!" he thought enviously.
5916
In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with his
fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.
5917
When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at him,
frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.
5918
"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.
5919
"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I lived
in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"
5920
And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was Anatole
Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and with whom
Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in order to be
married secretly.
5921
Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was told
him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince Andrew's deeply
loved affianced wife- the same Natasha Rostova who used to be so
charming- should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole who was
already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in love
with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre could
not conceive and could not imagine.
5922
He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha, whom
he had known from a child, with this new conception of her baseness,
folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all alike!" he
said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man unfortunate
enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied Prince Andrew to
the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded pride, and the more
he pitied his friend the more did he think with contempt and even with
disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him in the ballroom with
such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that Natasha's soul was
overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation, and that it was not
her fault that her face happened to assume an expression of calm
dignity and severity.
5923
"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna. "He
could not marry- he is married!"
5924
"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna. "A
nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him- expecting him
since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."
5925
After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and giving
vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya Dmitrievna
told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that the count or
Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew of this affair
(which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge Anatole to a duel,
and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his brother-in-law in her name
to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set eyes on him again. Pierre-
only now realizing the danger to the old count, Nicholas, and Prince
Andrew- promised to do as she wished. Having briefly and exactly
explained her wishes to him, she let him go to the drawing room.
5926
"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing either,"
she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use expecting him! And
stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after Pierre.
5927
Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.
5928
"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What troubles
one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret having
come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she has broken
off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true this
engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an excellent
man, but still, with his father's disapproval they wouldn't have been
happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it has been going on so
long, and to take such a step without father's or mother's consent! And
now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard, Count, hard to manage
daughters in their mother's absence...."
5929
Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
5930
Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.
5931
"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to see
you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."
5932
"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to send
him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it all
was!"
5933
And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
room.
5934
When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha
did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by
Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the
corridor to Natasha's room.
5935
Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and her
eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look the
moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed fixedly at
him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or like the
others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he evidently did
not exist for her.
5936
"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre and
addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the truth."
5937
Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded animal
looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
5938
"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a feeling of
pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do, "whether it is
true or not should make no difference to you, because..."
5939
"Then it is not true that he's married!"
5940
"Yes, it is true."
5941
"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."
5942
Pierre gave his word of honor.
5943
"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.
5944
"Yes, I have just seen him."
5945
She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands that
they should leave her alone.
5946
CHAPTER XX
5947
Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at
once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the thought
of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a difficulty in
breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the gypsies', nor at
Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all was going on as
usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were sitting about in
groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town news. The footman
having greeted him, knowing his habits and his acquaintances, told him
there was a place left for him in the small dining room and that Prince
Michael Zakharych was in the library, but Paul Timofeevich had not yet
arrived. One of Pierre's acquaintances, while they were talking about
the weather, asked if he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova
which was talked of in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and
said it was nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked
everyone about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and
another that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see
this calm, indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in
his soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,
and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove
home.
5948
Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with Dolokhov,
consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate affair. It seemed
to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he drove to his
sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting. When Pierre
returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his valet informed
him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The countess' drawing
room was full of guests.
5949
Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his return-
at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever- entered the
drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.
5950
"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You don't
know what a plight our Anatole..."
5951
She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head, in his
glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of that
rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced after his
duel with Dolokhov.
5952
"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.
5953
Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready to
follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward himself
and was leading him from the room.
5954
"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene, but
Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.
5955
Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face betrayed
anxiety.
5956
Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed Anatole
without looking at him.
5957
"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to elope
with her, is that so?"
5958
"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in French),
"I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to me in that
tone."
5959
Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized
Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him
from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of
terror.
5960
"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.
5961
"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button of
his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.
5962
"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives me
from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.
5963
He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once
put it back in its place.
5964
"Did you promise to marry her?"
5965
"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."
5966
Pierre interrupted him.
5967
"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving toward
Anatole.
5968
Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his pocket
and drew out his pocketbook.
5969
Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.
5970
"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as if
repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a short
pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you must get
out of Moscow."
5971
"But how can I?..."
5972
"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must never
breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess Rostova. I
know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark of
conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.
5973
Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
5974
"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there is
such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you are
ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse yourself
with women like my wife- with them you are within your rights, for they
know what you want of them. They are armed against you by the same
experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to marry her... to
deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is as mean as
beating an old man or a child?..."
5975
Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with a
questioning look.
5976
"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more confident as
Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't want to," he
said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of his lower jaw,
"but you have used such words to me- 'mean' and so on- which as a man
of honor I can't allow anyone to use."
5977
Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
wanted.
5978
"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."
5979
"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.
5980
"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do as
you wish, eh?"
5981
"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
you require money for your journey..."
5982
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile, which
Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
5983
"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.
5984
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
5985
CHAPTER XXI
5986
Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of
her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole house
was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill, having, as
Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the night after
she had been told that Anatole was married, with some arsenic she had
stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had been so
frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done. The
necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was now out
of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the question to move
her to the country, and so the countess had been sent for. Pierre saw
the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a tear-stained face, but he
could not see Natasha.
5987
Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip about
the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these rumors,
assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and
re-establish Natasha's reputation.
5988
He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day to
the old prince's for news of him.
5989
Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits than
usual and awaited his son with great impatience.
5990
Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from Prince
Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come to see him.
5991
As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and given
it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of Natasha's
elopement, with additions.
5992
Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see him
next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost the same
state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering the drawing
room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated voice about
some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's voice and
another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out to meet
Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room where Prince
Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy with his
sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both at what had
happened and at the way her brother had taken the news of Natasha's
faithlessness.
5993
"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not let
him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far better,
than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."
5994
"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.
5995
Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not understand
how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the study. Prince
Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health, but with a fresh
horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in civilian dress facing
his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly disputing and vigorously
gesticulating. The conversation was about Speranski- the news of whose
sudden exile and alleged treachery had just reached Moscow.
5996
"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about him
a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were unable
to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and to throw
on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy, but I
maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this reign it
was done by him, by him alone."
5997
He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and immediately
assumed a vindictive expression.
5998
"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
Pierre.
5999
"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with animation, but
the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am well," he said in
answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.
6000
To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is now of
no use to anyone."
6001
After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre, and
about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his son's
tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation about
Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.
6002
"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I do
not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"
6003
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only too
familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous matters
in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too intimate.
When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took Pierre's arm and
asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A bed had been made
up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks stood about. Prince
Andrew went to one and took out a small casket, from which he drew a
packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently and very quickly. He
stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his lips compressed.
6004
"Forgive me for troubling you..."
6005
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated
Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he
continued:
6006
"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard reports
of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of that
kind. Is that true?"
6007
"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew interrupted
him.
6008
"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.
6009
He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
6010
"Give this to the countess... if you see her."
6011
"She is very ill," said Pierre.
6012
"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince Kuragin?" he
added quickly.
6013
"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."
6014
"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled like his
father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
6015
"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his hand?"
said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
6016
"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.
6017
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his father.
6018
"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.
6019
"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.
6020
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess Rostova
that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all that is
good."
6021
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember whether
he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre would say
anything, looked fixedly at him.
6022
"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
"about..."
6023
"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."
6024
"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.
6025
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her hand
again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very noble, but
I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you wish to be
my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well, good-by. So
you'll give her the packet?"
6026
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
6027
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same as
always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed her
satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at them
Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to mention
the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone else.
6028
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was
becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with
his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an
unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.
6029
CHAPTER XXII
6030
That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the commission
entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the Club, and
Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya Dmitrievna who
was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken the news. Ten
minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.
6031
"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.
6032
"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not been
tidied up."
6033
"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.
6034
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
6035
"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,
don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the heart
to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be pitied."
6036
Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated, with
a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected to find
her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently
undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.
6037
Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her
arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
expression of face.
6038
"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
friend- is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
to apply to you..."
6039
Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then he had
reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he now felt
so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for reproach.
6040
"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped and
breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
6041
"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."
6042
He did not know what to say.
6043
Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think
she had meant.
6044
"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never be.
I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only that I
beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."
6045
She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
6046
A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.
6047
"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said Pierre.
"But... I should like to know one thing...."
6048
"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.
6049
"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how to
refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him- "did you love that
bad man?"
6050
"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
all...."
6051
She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness, and
love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his
spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.
6052
"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his gentle,
cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.
6053
"We won't speak of it, my dear- I'll tell him everything; but one thing
I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help, advice, or
simply to open your heart to someone- not now, but when your mind is
clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it. "I shall be happy
if it's in my power..."
6054
Pierre grew confused.
6055
"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed Natasha and
turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.
6056
He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it he was
amazed at his own words.
6057
"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.
6058
"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and
self-abasement.
6059
"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this
moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"
6060
For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.
6061
Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom, restraining
tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without finding the
sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his sleigh.
6062
"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.
6063
"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to
the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in
comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in
comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
through her tears.
6064
"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost Fahrenheit
he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and inhaled the
air with joy.
6065
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been
raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,
above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all sides
by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth,
its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and
brilliant comet of 18l2- the comet which was said to portend all kinds
of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with
its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he
gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which,
having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through
immeasurable space, seemed suddenly- like an arrow piercing the earth-
to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail erect,
shining and displaying its white light amid countless other
scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully
responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul,
now blossoming into a new life.
6066
BOOK NINE: 1812
6067
CHAPTER I
6068
From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating of
the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces- millions
of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army- moved from
the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which since 1811
Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth of June, 1812,
the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war
began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to
human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such
innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of
false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole
centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the
world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as
being crimes.
6069
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The
historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs
inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the
Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of
Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
6070
Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to
have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon
to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to
restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there would have been
no war.
6071
We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries.
It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's
intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It
naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of
the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the
cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the
cause of the way was the Continental System which was ruining Europe;
to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was
the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day
that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the
diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the
alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently
well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of
Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and
infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless
diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that
day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all
its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes
seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of
Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon
was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what
connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter
and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from
the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and
Moscow and were killed by them.
6072
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event with
unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes present
themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of
them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of causes appears
to us equally valid in itself and equally false by its insignificance
compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its impotence- apart
from the cooperation of all the other coincident causes- to occasion
the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal
to serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon's refusal to
withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of
Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third,
and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have
been so many less men in Napoleon's army and the war could not have
occurred.
6073
Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a
second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there
have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of
Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been
an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a
subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced the
French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing
could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided
to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that occurrence,
but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men, renouncing
their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to east to slay
their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes of men had come
from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.
6074
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed
to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was
drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be
otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on
whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence
of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the
event could not have taken place. It was necessary that millions of men
in whose hands lay the real power- the soldiers who fired, or
transported provisions and guns- should consent to carry out the will
of these weak individuals, and should have been induced to do so by an
infinite number of diverse and complex causes.
6075
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational
events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not
understand). The more we try to explain such events in history
reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become
to us.
6076
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain from
doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that action
performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and belongs
to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined significance.
6077
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life,
which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his
elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for
him.
6078
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in
the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of humanity. A deed
done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in time with the actions
of millions of other men assumes an historic significance. The higher a
man stands on the social ladder, the more people he is connected with
and the more power he has over others, the more evident is the
predestination and inevitability of his every action.
6079
"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."
6080
A king is history's slave.
6081
History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind, uses
every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
6082
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than ever
that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses
peuples73 as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he
wrote him- he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws,
which compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own
volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history-
whatever had to be performed.
73
"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."
6083
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and by
the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's
wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it seemed
to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace, the
French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his people's
inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the
expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages
to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors he received
in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the opinion of
contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to attain peace,
but which only wounded the self-love of both sides, and millions and
millions of other causes that adapted themselves to the event that was
happening or coincided with it.
6084
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its
attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried
by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or
because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
6085
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in
which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the botanist
who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue decays and
so forth is equally right with the child who stands under the tree and
says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.
Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow
because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander desired his
destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million
tons fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his
mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving
names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection
with the event itself.
6086
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is
in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course
of history and predestined from eternity.
6087
CHAPTER II
6088
On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and
diamonds of his own- that is, which he had taken from other kings- to
the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us, tenderly
embraced the Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her husband,
though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved by the
parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the diplomatists
still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and worked zealously
to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon himself wrote a letter to
Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere, and sincerely assured him
that he did not want war and would always love and honor him- yet he
set off to join his army, and at every station gave fresh orders to
accelerate the movement of his troops from west to east. He went in a
traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp,
and an escort, along the road to Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg.
At each of these towns thousands of people met him with excitement and
enthusiasm.
6089
The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses carried
him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,74 coming up
with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on the
estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.
74
Old style.
6090
Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the Niemen,
and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank in order
to select a place for the crossing.
6091
Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of
Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the
Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon
unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic
considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to
cross the Niemen.
6092
Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out of
the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown across
the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence, were on the
lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in an overcoat
and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of his tent on
the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive l'Empereur!" and
one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of the vast forest
that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and on by the three
bridges to the other side.
6093
"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself, things
get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So these are
the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au revoir,
Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au revoir. Good
luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!... preur!- If they
make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you Minister of Kashmir-
that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks-
those rascals- see how they run! Vive l'Empereur! There he is, do you
see him? I've seen him twice, as I see you now. The little corporal...
I saw him give the cross to one of the veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!"
came the voices of men, old and young, of most diverse characters and
social positions. On the faces of all was one common expression of joy
at the commencement of the long-expected campaign and of rapture and
devotion to the man in the gray coat who was standing on the hill.
6094
On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse was
brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one of the
bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant and
rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because it was
impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of him by such
shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him everywhere disturbed
him and distracted him from the military cares that had occupied him
from the time he joined the army. He rode across one of the swaying
pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply to the left, and
galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by enraptured, mounted
chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with delight, galloped ahead to
clear a path for him through the troops. On reaching the broad river
Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of Polish Uhlans stationed by the
river.
6095
"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
pressing against one another to see him.
6096
Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a
log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was
handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run up
to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became absorbed in a
map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he said something,
and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the Polish Uhlans.
6097
"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.
6098
The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel of the
Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his speech
from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be permitted
to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford. In evident
fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on a horse, he
begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the Emperor's
eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor would not be
displeased at this excess of zeal.
6099
As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached officer,
with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted "Vivat!"
and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse and
galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse, which
had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading for
the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans
galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in
the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as
they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some of
the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some
clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way forward
to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of a mile
away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river
under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even looking
at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having returned and
choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the Emperor's attention
to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man in the gray
overcoat got up and, having summoned Berthier, began pacing up and down
the bank with him, giving him instructions and occasionally glancing
disapprovingly at the drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
6100
For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of the
world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough to
dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called for
his horse and rode to his quarters.
6101
Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were sent to
their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from which
they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and with
difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they had
got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted "Vivat!"
and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been but where
he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves happy.
6102
That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian paper
money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as quickly as
possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a letter
containing information about the orders to the French army had been
found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish colonel who had
needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled in the Legion
d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.
6103
Quos vult perdere dementat.75
75
Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
6104
CHAPTER III
6105
The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than a
month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for
the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor had
come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The
vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even
increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each
of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no
supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume
that responsibility himself.
6106
The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody- tired
of waiting- prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who
surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend his
time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.
6107
In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by
the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the
Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be
given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly
received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected
money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to
the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the
fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner, regatta,
and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.
6108
The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian frontier,
Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by his
aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.
6109
It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters declared
that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one place.
Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who had
followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the
refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of beauty.
The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.
6110
Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not an
aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris was
now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of
his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen her
for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was enjoying
the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only recently
married, they met as good friends of long standing.
6111
At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a suitable
partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris. They were the
third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling bare shoulders
which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze gown, talked to her
of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware of it himself and
unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased to observe the Emperor
who was in the same room. The Emperor was not dancing, he stood in the
doorway, stopping now one pair and now another with gracious words
which he alone knew how to utter.
6112
As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev, one of
those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him and contrary
to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to a Polish
lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked inquiringly
at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only acted thus
because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded slightly to
the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to speak before a
look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He took Balashev by
the arm and crossed the room with him, unconsciously clearing a path
seven yards wide as the people on both sides made way for him. Boris
noticed Arakcheev's excited face when the sovereign went out with
Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the Emperor from under his brow and,
sniffing with his red nose, stepped forward from the crowd as if
expecting the Emperor to address him. (Boris understood that Arakcheev
envied Balashev and was displeased that evidently important news had
reached the Emperor otherwise than through himself.)
6113
But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated garden
without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and glancing
wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.
6114
All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka, he was
worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and how he
could find it out before others. In the figure in which he had to
choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to choose
Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the veranda, and
glided over the parquet to the door opening into the garden, where,
seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the veranda, he stood
still. They were moving toward the door. Boris, fluttering as if he had
not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed close to the doorpost
with bowed head.
6115
The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
affronted, was finishing with these words:
6116
"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as long
as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to Boris that
it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was satisfied
with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but displeased
that Boris had overheard it.
6117
"Let no one know of it! " the Emperor added with a frown.
6118
Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his eyes,
slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
remained there about another half-hour.
6119
Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army had
crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
important personages that much that was concealed from others was
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
estimation.
6120
The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations, and
at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of
indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased
him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On
returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,
Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a rescript
to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the words
being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a single armed
Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
6121
Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
6122
Monsieur mon frere,
6123
Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression, that
Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with me
from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons on
which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him would
never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a pretext for
aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has declared, was
never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I was informed of
it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and ordered him to
remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend to shed the blood
of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and consents to withdraw
your troops from Russian territory, I will regard what has passed as
not having occurred and an understanding between us will be possible.
In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see myself forced to repel
an attack that nothing on my part has provoked. It still depends on
Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the calamity of another war. I
am, etc.,
6124
(signed) Alexander
6125
CHAPTER IV
6126
At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him to
take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When dispatching
Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he would not make
peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on Russian soil and told
him to transmit those words to Napoleon. Alexander did not insert them
in his letter to Napoleon, because with his characteristic tact he felt
it would be injudicious to use them at a moment when a last attempt at
reconciliation was being made, but he definitely instructed Balashev to
repeat them personally to Napoleon.
6127
Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied by a
bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts at the
village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn. There
he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.
6128
A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform and a
shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt. Balashev did
not do so at once, but continued to advance along the road at a walking
pace.
6129
The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his saber,
and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he deaf that he
did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was. The
noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about
regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.
6130
After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in
general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the service,
Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to encounter this
hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application of brute force
to himself.
6131
The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air was
fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road from
the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one after
another, like bubbles rising in water.
6132
Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer from the
village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French hussars looked
silently at one another from time to time.
6133
A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed, came
riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse, accompanied by
two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their horses all looked
smart and well kept.
6134
It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.
6135
The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was polite and
evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past his
soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to be
presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied immediately, as
the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.
6136
They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French hussar
horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and stared
with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the other end of
the village. The colonel said that the commander of the division was a
mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev and conduct him to
his destination.
6137
The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.
6138
They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a
group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a black
horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall man with
plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his shoulders. He wore
a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward in French fashion.
This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his plumes flowing and his
gems and gold lace glittering in the bright June sunshine.
6139
Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was galloping
toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when Julner, the
French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of Naples!" It was,
in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though it was quite
incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he was called so, and
was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore assumed a more
solemn and important air than formerly. He was so sure that he really
was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of his departure from that
city, while walking through the streets with his wife, some Italians
called out to him: "Viva il re!"76 he turned to his wife with
a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know that I am
leaving them tomorrow!"
76
"Long live the king."
6140
But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and pitied
the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly, after he
had been ordered to return to military service- and especially since
his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when his august
brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you should reign in
my way, but not in yours!"- he had cheerfully taken up his familiar
business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat horse that feels himself
in harness and grows skittish between the shafts- he dressed up in
clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and gaily and
contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without himself knowing
why or whither.
6141
On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its long
hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner, and
looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully
informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not
pronounce.
6142
"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make
your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
condescension.
6143
As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
withers of Balashev's horse and said:
6144
"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a circumstance
of which he was unable to judge.
6145
"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does not
desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the words
Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation unavoidable in
frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a novelty.
6146
Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to
"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!77 and he felt
it incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs
with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving
a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to
pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He referred
to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand that he
should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when that demand
became generally known and the dignity of France was thereby offended.
77
"Royalty has its obligations."
6147
Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the demand,
because..." but Murat interrupted him.
6148
"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he asked
unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.
6149
Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of
the war.
6150
"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my heart
I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and that the
war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as possible!" said
he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain good friends with
another despite a quarrel between their masters.
6151
And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of his
health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had spent
with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal dignity,
Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which he had stood
at his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said:
6152
"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your mission,"
and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers, and his
glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were respectfully
awaiting him.
6153
Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very soon
be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the next
village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him as the
pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the corps
commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to Marshal
Davout.
6154
CHAPTER V
6155
Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander- though not a
coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to
express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.
6156
In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are
necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always
appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and their
proximity to the head of the government may be. This inevitability
alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore out a grenadier's
mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves rendered him unable to
face danger, and who was neither an educated man nor a courtier, was
able to maintain his powerful position with Alexander, whose own
character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.
6157
Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a peasant's
hut, writing- he was auditing accounts. Better quarters could have been
found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who purposely put
themselves in most depressing conditions to have a justification for
being gloomy. For the same reason they are always hard at work and in a
hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of life when, as you see, I
am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty shed?" the expression of
his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure and necessity of such men,
when they encounter anyone who shows animation, is to flaunt their own
dreary, persistent activity. Davout allowed himself that pleasure when
Balashev was brought in. He became still more absorbed in his task when
the Russian general entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at
Balashev's face, which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by
his talk with Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still
more and sneered malevolently.
6158
When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression this
reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked what he
wanted.
6159
Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because
Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor
Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to inform
him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation, Davout, after
hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.
6160
"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send it
to the Emperor."
6161
Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to the
Emperor.
6162
"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said Davout,
"you must do as you're told."
6163
And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his
dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer
on duty.
6164
Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and laid
it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging on it,
laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the
inscription.
6165
"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"
protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to
be adjutant general to His Majesty...."
6166
Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the
signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.
6167
"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet in
his pocket, left the shed.
6168
A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and
conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.
6169
That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the barrels.
6170
Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to
him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the
baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one
except Monsieur de Castres.
6171
After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his impotence
and insignificance- particularly acute by contrast with the sphere of
power in which he had so lately moved- and after several marches with
the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied the whole
district, Balashev was brought to Vilna- now occupied by the French-
through the very gate by which he had left it four days previously.
6172
Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne, came
to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to honor
him with an audience.
6173
Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had stood in
front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now two French
grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front and with
shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and Uhlans and a
brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals, who were waiting
for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch, round his saddle
horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received Balashev in the very
house in Vilna from which Alexander had dispatched him on his mission.
6174
CHAPTER VI
6175
Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the luxury
and magnificence of Napoleon's court.
6176
The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many
generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates- several of whom
Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia- were waiting.
Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before going
for his ride.
6177
After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came into
the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev to follow
him.
6178
Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led into a
study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had dispatched him
on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He heard hurried
footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened rapidly; all
was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of other steps,
firm and resolute- they were those of Napoleon. He had just finished
dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform, opening in front over a
white waistcoat so long that it covered his rotund stomach, white
leather breeches tightly fitting the fat thighs of his short legs, and
Hessian boots. His short hair had evidently just been brushed, but one
lock hung down in the middle of his broad forehead. His plump white
neck stood out sharply above the black collar of his uniform, and he
smelled of Eau de Cologne. His full face, rather young-looking, with
its prominent chin, wore a gracious and majestic expression of imperial
welcome.
6179
He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head slightly
thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad thick
shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had that
imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live in
comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits that
day.
6180
He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming up
to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of his
time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but is sure
he will always say the right thing and say it well.
6181
"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you brought
from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He glanced
with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately looked past
him.
6182
It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at all.
Evidently only what took place within