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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 took the first opportunity to gain his confidence,
flatter him, become intimate with him, and finally make his request. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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." |
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"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." |
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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. |
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"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." |
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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. |
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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 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. |
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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. |
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Like
the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of attitude toward
him that had taken place in society. |
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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. |
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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." |
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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. |
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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: |
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"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." |
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The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre, looking
as if she had to give some final necessary instructions. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna
Pavlovna's voice, "I see you are all right there." |
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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. |
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A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said to
him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?" |
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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. |
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"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." |
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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. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
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"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." |
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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. |
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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?" |
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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. |
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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. |
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"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?"
asked one of the ladies. |
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"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." |
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"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing. |
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"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...." |
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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!" |
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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. |
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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. |
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"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. |
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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. |
|
|
"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated
Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear
fellow." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre. |
|
|
"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter's happiness. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
And he again turned to Pierre. |
|
|
"Sergey Kuzmich- From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top
button of his waistcoat. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his wife,
was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre. |
|
|
"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my
dear..." |
|
|
"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are
about." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Still the same," she said to her husband. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!..." |
|
|
He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks. |
|
|
"Princess, come here!" he shouted. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Helene!" he said aloud and paused. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his
spectacles. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought
Pierre. |
|
|
"Je vous aime!"* he said, remembering what has to be said at
such moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself. |
|
|
*"I love you." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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 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." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing. |
|
|
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one evening in
advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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...." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor." |
|
|
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be
thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!" |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"Your honor, I thought..." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted. |
|
|
"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?" |
|
|
"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a
bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state." |
|
|
"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
"Heaven knows what a fright might do." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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?" |
|
|
"No, mon pere." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the
prince's question as to how she felt. |
|
|
"Do you want anything?" |
|
|
"No, merci, mon pere." |
|
|
"Well, all right, all right." |
|
|
He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood with
bowed head. |
|
|
"Has the snow been shoveled back?" |
|
|
"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only
my stupidity." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince." |
|
|
"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I
can't bear those old men! Eh?" |
|
|
"Remember, for you everything depends on this." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess,
waddling in, and sinking heavily into an armchair. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just
one more little effort." |
|
|
The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to Princess
Mary. |
|
|
"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming,"
she said. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same to
me," answered a voice struggling with tears. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess
Mary gave no answer, she left the room. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came
the maid's voice at the door. |
|
|
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? |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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's* receptions where you always ran
away; you remember cette chere Annette!" |
|
|
*Anna Pavlovna. |
|
|
"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!" |
|
|
"And our little tea table?" |
|
|
"Oh, yes!" |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized the
opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections. |
|
|
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."* |
|
|
*The little one is charming. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he
added aloud. |
|
|
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!" |
|
|
He went straight up to Prince Vasili. |
|
|
"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!" |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole. |
|
|
"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well,
come and kiss me," and he offered his cheek. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess,
with a blush. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
reduced to tears. |
|
|
"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,"
said Prince Vasili. |
|
|
"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince
Bolkonski, turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get
acquainted." |
|
|
"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a
smile beside the old prince. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly
able to restrain his laughter. |
|
|
"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?" |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha,
ha!" laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly
Prince Bolkonski frowned. |
|
|
"You may go," he said to Anatole. |
|
|
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies. |
|
|
"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't
you?" said the old prince to Prince Vasili. |
|
|
"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education
there is much better than ours." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"All right, all right, we'll see!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he got
into bed, all kept awake a long time that night. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard him
pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though 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. |
|
|
"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...." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered
by the shirt. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Gone to bed?" asked the prince. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your
excellency." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess,
growing pale and then blushing. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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..." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"But I do not know, Father!" |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said
Mademoiselle Bourienne. |
|
|
"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and
I will try to do all I can for your happiness." |
|
|
"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand being
so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye. |
|
|
"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?" |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
Prince Vasili rose. |
|
|
"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.'" |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still living
with the Rostovs. |
|
|
"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,
prepared to sympathize in any way. |
|
|
The count sobbed yet more. |
|
|
"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling
boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How tell the
little countess!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!" |
|
|
"Nothing, my dear." |
|
|
"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up- I know you know
something." |
|
|
Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head. |
|
|
"You are a little slyboots," she said. |
|
|
"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,
reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face. |
|
|
"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your
mamma." |
|
|
"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at
once." |
|
|
Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the letter, on
condition that she should tell no one. |
|
|
"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha,crossing herself,
"I won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya. |
|
|
"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful
triumph. |
|
|
"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white. |
|
|
Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced on
Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news. |
|
|
She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry. |
|
|
"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he
wrote himself," said she through her tears. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
Natasha smiled through her tears. |
|
|
"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya. |
|
|
"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an
officer." |
|
|
"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps
she deceived you. Let us go to Mamma." |
|
|
Petya paced the room in silence for a time. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!" |
|
|
"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said
Petya. |
|
|
"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's
silence. |
|
|
Sonya smiled. |
|
|
"Do I remember Nicholas?" |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Shall you write to him?" she asked. |
|
|
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? |
|
|
"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she
said, blushing. |
|
|
"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?" |
|
|
Sonya smiled. |
|
|
"No." |
|
|
"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to." |
|
|
"Why should you be ashamed?" |
|
|
"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed." |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha. |
|
|
"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old
Petya, with the air of an old brigadier. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says
one should be glad and not cry." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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...." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked. |
|
|
"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing
his hand. |
|
|
At that moment the door opened. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Dear me, how you have changed!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"As you see," he said. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some
wine." |
|
|
Boris made a grimace. |
|
|
"If you really want it," said he. |
|
|
He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and sent
for wine. |
|
|
"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he
added. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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..." |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg,
getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice. |
|
|
"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the
letter. |
|
|
"Why?" |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the
letter under the table. |
|
|
"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris. |
|
|
"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want it
for!" |
|
|
"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading
the address. "This letter would be of great use to you." |
|
|
"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant." |
|
|
"Why not?" inquired Boris. |
|
|
"It's a lackey's job!" |
|
|
"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris,
shaking his head. |
|
|
"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the point...
Come, how are you?" asked Rostov. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"Why?" |
|
|
"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try
to make as successful a career of it as possible." |
|
|
"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something
else. |
|
|
He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently
trying in vain to find the answer to some question. |
|
|
Old Gabriel brought in the wine. |
|
|
"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would
drink with you. I can't." |
|
|
"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?"
asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile. |
|
|
"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow,"
answered Boris. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently
reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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?" |
|
|
"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult
the aide-de-camp. |
|
|
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!" |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a
quiet and particularly amiable smile. |
|
|
A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this man's
self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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 sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and
all became silent. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in French to
the Austrian Emperor and smiled. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?"
thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!" |
|
|
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! |
|
|
"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of
them." |
|
|
"Oh, to die, to die for him " thought Rostov. |
|
|
The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the soldiers,
straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if undecided. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor. |
|
|
"My
God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the fire this
instant!" thought Rostov. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander. His
every word and movement was described with ecstasy. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two battles
would have made them. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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." |
|
|
"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have
been thinking about you." |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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." |
|
|
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. |
|
|
It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz
occupied by the Emperors and their retinues. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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?" |
|
|
"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski. |
|
|
"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.'" |
|
|
"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him General
Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski. |
|
|
"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.'" |
|
|
Dolgorukov laughed merrily. |
|
|
"Only that?" said Bolkonski. |
|
|
"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the
address. He is a wise and clever fellow." |
|
|
"What was it?" |
|
|
"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement
francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't
it?" |
|
|
"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
"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!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"Who was that?" asked Boris. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking. |
|
|
"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. |
|
|
One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he had
taken from the prisoner. |
|
|
"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks. |
|
|
"If you like, your honor!" |
|
|
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. |
|
|
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. |
|
|
"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian
good-naturedly to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar. |
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Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money. |
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"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm
to make him go on. |
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"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the
hussars. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired. |
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"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one
compared to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?" |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away. |
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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!" |
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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!" |
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"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!" |
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"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers. |
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And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and no
less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov. |
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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. |
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"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone. |
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The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts. |
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Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder. |
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"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen in
love with the Tsar," he said. |
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"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such
a lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..." |
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"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and
appwove..." |
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"No, you don't understand!" |
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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. |
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