WAR AND PEACE(战争与和平)1

WAR AND PEACE 1
by Leo Tolstoy
BOOK ONE: 1805
CHAPTER I
"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the
Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,
if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by
that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have
nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer
my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see
I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."
It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna
Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya
Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man
of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her
reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as
she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in
St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.
All her invitations without exception, written in French, and
delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:
"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the
prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too
terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-
Annette Scherer."
"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the
least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing
an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had
stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke
in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but
thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a
man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went
up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,
scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the
sofa.
"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's
mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the
politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even
irony could be discerned.
"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times
like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are
staying the whole evening, I hope?"
"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I
must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is
coming for me to take me there."
"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these
festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."
"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would
have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by
force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's
dispatch? You know everything."
"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,
listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that
Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to
burn ours."
Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a
stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty
years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an
enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she
did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to
disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile
which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played
round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual
consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor
could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.
In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna
burst out:
"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand
things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.
She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious
sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is
the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to
perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble
that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and
crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than
ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must
avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely
on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot
understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has
refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some
secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.
The English have not understood and cannot understand the
self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only
desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And
what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has
always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe
is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg
says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a
trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored
monarch. He will save Europe!"
She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.
"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been
sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the
King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you
give me a cup of tea?"
"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am
expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,
who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of
the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good
ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He
has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"
"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"
he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred
to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive
of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke
to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts
is a poor creature."
Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others
were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it
for the baron.
Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she
nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or
was pleased with.
"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her
sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.
As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an
expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with
sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious
patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron
Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.
The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the
womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna
Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of
a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,
so she said:
"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came
out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly
beautiful."
The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.
"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer
to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that
political and social topics were ended and the time had come for
intimate conversation- "I often think how unfairly sometimes the
joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid
children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like
him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her
eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate
them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."
And she smiled her ecstatic smile.
"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I
lack the bump of paternity."
"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I
am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her
face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her
Majesty's and you were pitied...."
The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,
awaiting a reply. He frowned.
"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all
a father could for their education, and they have both turned out
fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active
one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling
in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles
round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse
and unpleasant.
"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a
father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna
Pavlovna, looking up pensively.
"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my
children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That
is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"
He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a
gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.
"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"
she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and
though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet,I know a little
person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of
yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."
Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory
and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a
movement of the head that he was considering this information.
"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad
current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand
rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in
five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what
we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"
"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He
is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army
under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is
very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very
unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise
Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here
tonight."
"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna
Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange
that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-
slafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She
is rich and of good family and that's all I want."
And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised
the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and
fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.
"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,
young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can
be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my
apprenticeship as old maid."
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CHAPTER II
Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest
Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age
and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.
Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her
father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and
her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess
Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was
also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being
pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small
receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,
whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.
*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.
To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my
aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or
her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who
had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to
arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna
Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.
Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom
not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of
them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful
and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of
them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health
of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each
visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left
the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious
duty and did not return to her the whole evening.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a
gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a
delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her
teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming
when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always
the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect- the shortness
of her upper lip and her half-open mouth- seemed to be her own special
and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of
this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life
and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull
dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company
and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were
becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,
and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her
white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that
day.
The little princess went round the table with quick, short,
swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her
dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was
doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought
my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all
present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick
on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to
be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."
And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,
dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.
"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone
else," replied Anna Pavlovna.
"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in
French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going
to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she
added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she
turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.
"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince
Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.
One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with
close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable
at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout
young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known
grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man
had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had
only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this
was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with
the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.
But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and
fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the
place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was
certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety
could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant
and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else
in that drawing room.
"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor
invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her
aunt as she conducted him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look
round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to
the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate
acquaintance.
Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the
aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.
Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know
the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."
"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very
interesting but hardly feasible."
"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and
get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now
committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady
before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak
to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big
feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the
abbe's plan chimerical.
"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.
And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,
she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,
ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to
flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands
to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or
there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and
hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna
Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a
too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the
conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid
these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an
anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to
listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to
another group whose center was the abbe.
Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna
Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all
the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like
a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of
missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the
self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he
was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he
came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he
stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young
people are fond of doing.
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CHAPTER III
Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed
steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,
beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face
was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company
had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed
round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the
beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little
Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump
for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna
Pavlovna.
The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and
polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out
of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in
which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up
as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a
specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen
it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served
up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly
choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing
the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc
d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were
particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.
"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,
with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in
the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."
The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness
to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone
to listen to his tale.
"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of
the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to
another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a
third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest
and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef
on a hot dish.
The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.
"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the
beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of
another group.
The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with
which she had first entered the room- the smile of a perfectly
beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed
with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and
sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,
not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously
allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and
shapely shoulders, back, and bosom- which in the fashion of those days
were very much exposed- and she seemed to bring the glamour of a
ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so
lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on
the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too
victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish
its effect.
"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted
his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something
extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also
with her unchanging smile.
"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,
smilingly inclining his head.
The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and
considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the
story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful
round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her
still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond
necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and
whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at
once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's
face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.
The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.
"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking
of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."
There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking
merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in
her seat.
"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she
took up her work.
Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle
and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.
Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary
resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that
in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features
were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by
a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,
and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the
contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of
sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,
nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,
and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.
"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside
the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this
instrument he could not begin to speak.
"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging
his shoulders.
"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone
which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he
had uttered them.
He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be
sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was
dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of
cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.
The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then
current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to
Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon
Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in
his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits
to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter
spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by
death.
The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point
where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies
looked agitated.
"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the
little princess.
"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle
into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of
the story prevented her from going on with it.
The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully
prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a
watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he
was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to
the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe
about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by
the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet
theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,
which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.
"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of
the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one
powerful nation like Russia- barbaric as she is said to be- to place
herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its
object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would
save the world!"
"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.
At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at
Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The
Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively
affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing
with women.
"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the
society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have
had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think
of the climate," said he.
Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more
conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the
larger circle.
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CHAPTER IV
Just them another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew
Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome
young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.
Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,
measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little
wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing
room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look
at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so
tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.
He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome
face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned
the whole company.
"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.
"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the
last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been
pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."
"And Lise, your wife?"
"She will go to the country."
"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"
"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same
coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has
been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"
Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who
from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with
glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he
looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance
with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming
face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.
"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to
Pierre.
"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper
with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the
vicomte who was continuing his story.
"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's
hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished
to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his
daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.
"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the
Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent
his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me
of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to
leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly
holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more
radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,
almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.
"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.
"Very," said Pierre.
In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna
Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a
whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.
Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever
women."
Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew
his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who
had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook
Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had
assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed
only anxiety and fear.
"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him
into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me
what news I may take back to my poor boy."
Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to
the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an
ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might
not go away.
"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he
would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.
"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered
Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I
should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.
That would be the best way."
The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the
best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of
society had lost her former influential connections. She had now
come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her
only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had
obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat
listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened
her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a
moment; then she smiled again and dutched Prince Vasili's arm more
tightly.
"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for
anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my
father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to
do this for my son- and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"
she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked
Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always
were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.
"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her
beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she
stood waiting by the door.
Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be
economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having
once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,
he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using
his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her
second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded
him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the
first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners
that she was one of those women- mostly mothers- who, having once made
up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and
are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour
after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved
him.
"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and
weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;
but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's
memory, I will do the impossible- your son shall be transferred to the
Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"
"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you- I knew your
kindness!" He turned to go.
"Wait- just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."
she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich
Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at
rest, and then..."
Prince Vasili smiled.
"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered
since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that
all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as
adjutants."
"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."
"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,
"we shall be late."
"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"
"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"
"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."
"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,
with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came
naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.
Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit
employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone
her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She
returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again
pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her
task was accomplished.
BK1|CH5
CHAPTER V
"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at
Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa
and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and
Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions
of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is
as if the whole world had gone crazy."
Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a
sarcastic smile.
"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very
fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in
Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"
*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run
over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to
endure this man who is a menace to everything."
"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite
but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis
XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he
became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward
of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they
are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."
And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.
Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time
through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the
little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde
coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much
gravity as if she had asked him to do it.
"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur- maison Conde," said
he.
The princess listened, smiling.
"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the
vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which
he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others
but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone
too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French
society- I mean good French society- will have been forever destroyed,
and then..."
He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to
make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,
who had him under observation, interrupted:
"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which
always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,
"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to
choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from
the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the
arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the
royalist emigrant.
"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite
rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it
will be difficult to return to the old regime."
"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into
the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to
Bonaparte's side."
"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte
without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to
know the real state of French public opinion.
"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic
smile.
It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his
remarks at him, though without looking at him.
"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"
Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting
Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I
do not know how far he was justified in saying so."
"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the
duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some
people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,
after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and
one hero less on earth."
Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their
appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the
conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say
something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was
a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed
greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole
responsibility of that deed."
"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.
"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows
greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing
her work nearer to her.
"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.
"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping
his knee with the palm of his hand.
The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at
his audience over his spectacles and continued.
"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled
from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon
alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general
good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."
"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.
But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.
"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great
because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,
preserved all that was good in it- equality of citizenship and freedom
of speech and of the press- and only for that reason did he obtain
power."
"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to
commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have
called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.
"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he
might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a
great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur
Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his
extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.
"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...
But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.
"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."
"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected
an ironical voice.
"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most
important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation
from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas
Napoleon has retained in full force."
"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at
last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words
were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who
does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached
liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?
On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the
vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment
of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was
horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had
not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was
impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the
vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.
"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the
fact of a great man executing a duc- or even an ordinary man who- is
innocent and untried?"
"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the
18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at
all like the conduct of a great man!"
"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the
little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.
His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,
his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by
another- a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed
to ask forgiveness.
The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly
that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.
All were silent.
"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince
Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish
between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.
So it seems to me."
"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of
this reinforcement.
"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man
was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa
where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are
other acts which it is difficult to justify."
Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness
of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time
to go.
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to
attend, and asking them all to be seated began:
"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to
it. Excuse me, Vicomte- I must tell it in Russian or the point will be
lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian
as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.
Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their
attention to his story.
"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She
must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was
her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."
Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with
difficulty.
"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a
livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some
calls.'"
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long
before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the
narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna
Pavlovna, did however smile.
"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat
and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no
longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world
knew...."
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had
told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna
and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so
agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the
anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about
the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,
and when and where.
BK1|CH6
CHAPTER VI
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests
began to take their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with
huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, to enter a
drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say
something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he
was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his
own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the
plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his
absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it
was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.
Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that
expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to
see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my
dear Monsieur Pierre."
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again
everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions
are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."
And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders
to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened
indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also
come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,
pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little
princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in
a low voice.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match
she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess'
sister-in-law.
"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.
"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au
revoir!"- and she left the hall.
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his
face close to her, began to whisper something.
Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and
a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to
the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of
understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as
usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince
Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?
Delightful!"
"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing
up her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be
there."
"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte
smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he
even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either
from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after
the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long
time, as though embracing her.
Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at
her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did
he seem.
"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.
Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest
fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out
into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into
the carriage.
"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as
well as with his feet.
The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the
dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince
Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.
"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,
disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and
affectionately.
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte
laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte
whom he had promised to take home.
"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside
Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very
nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers.
Hippolyte burst out laughing.
"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"
continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer
who gives himself the airs of a monarch."
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you
were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One
has to know how to deal with them."
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like
one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa,
took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was
Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it
in the middle.
"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,"
said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his
eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in
the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but- I
do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political
power...."
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such
abstract conversation.
"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you
at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the
other."
"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to
Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money.
Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre
had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not
decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was
speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he
had met that evening.
"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us
talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"
"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to
tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the
army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in
the world is not right."
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish
words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to
such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any
other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
wars," he said.
"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."
"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.
"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He
paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
me!"
BK1|CH7
CHAPTER VII
The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince
Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet
from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a
house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose
and politely placed a chair for her.
"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married?
How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for
saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative
fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"
"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he
wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess
with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the
quick.
"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand
it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars.
How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need
it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is
Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well
known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince
Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received
everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You
know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were
speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.
"When are you starting?" he asked.
"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"
said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had
spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must
be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked
significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered,
and a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone
besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a
tone of frigid politeness.
"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.
"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a
whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up
alone in the country."
"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.
"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
be afraid."
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if
she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though
the gist of the matter lay in that.
"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince
Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."
"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew.
"You had better go."
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip
quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about
the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him
and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a
tearful grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you
have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the
war and have no pity for me. Why is it?"
"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an
entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you
behave like that six months ago?"
"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened
to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to
bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you
I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An
outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself...
Good-by!"
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
the pleasure of spending the evening with you."
"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.
"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty
face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful
eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the
timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags
its drooping tail.
"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
as he would have done to a stranger.
BK1|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his
forehead with his small hand.
"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining
room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and
glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the
newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his
elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as
Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk- as one who
has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak
out.
"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry
till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable
of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and
have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and
irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing- or
all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be
wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise.
If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you
will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed
except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with
a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he
waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different
and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at
his friend in amazement.
"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of
those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what
would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one
to whom I mention this, because I like you."
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski
who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed
eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in
which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with
brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at
ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of
almost morbid irritation.
"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is
the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said
he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he
worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had
nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself
up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And
all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and
torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and
triviality- these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I
am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know
nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic
wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen
to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and
those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and
women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial
in everything- that's what women are when you see them in their true
colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were
something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't
marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.
"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should
consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have
everything before you, everything. And you..."
He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he
thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.
"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his
friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the
highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which
might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always
astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his
extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything,
knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all
at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck
by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he
himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a
defect but as a sign of strength.
Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life,
praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary
to wheels that they may run smoothly.
"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of
talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence,
smiling at his reassuring thoughts.
That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.
"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face
relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate
son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a
great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And
it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the
present I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what
I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously."
Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance- friendly and
affectionate as it was- expressed a sense of his own superiority.
"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among
our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all
the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up
visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so
badly- all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"
"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging
his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"
"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme
il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women,
'women and wine' I don't understand!"
Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the
dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to
reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.
"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy
thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading
such a life I can't decide or think properly about anything. One's
head aches, and one spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight,
but I won't go."
"You give me your word of honor not to go?"
"On my honor!"
BK1|CH9
CHAPTER IX
It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a
cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending
to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more
he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was
light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed
more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre
remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for
cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout,
finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.
"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.
But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go
there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so
passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so
accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately
occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,
because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to
come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of
honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if
one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so
extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all
the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort,
nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.
Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which
Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the
stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the
anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there
was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the
distance.
Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet
dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in
which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw
him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the
third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices,
the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine
young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others
were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and
trying to set him at the others.
"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.
"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.
"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."
"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."
"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.
"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow
who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine
linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here
is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.
Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,
particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober
ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was
Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler
and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about
him merrily.
"I don't understand. What's it all about?"
"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole,
taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.
"First of all you must drink!"
Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows
at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and
listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass
while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English
naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the
outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.
"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last
glass, "or I won't let you go!"
"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to
the window.
Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and
distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself
particularly to Anatole and Pierre.
Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue
eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore
no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face,
was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely
curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed
firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles
played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,
together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes,
produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face.
Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though
Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and
had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including
Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov
could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank,
he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at
that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.
The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented
anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two
footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions
and shouts of the gentlemen around.
Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted
to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame,
but could not move it. He smashed a pane.
"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.
Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame
out with a crash.
"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.
"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.
"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of
rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of
the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.
Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the
window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those
in the room. All were silent.
"I bet fifty imperials"- he spoke French that the Englishman might
understand him, but he did, not speak it very well- "I bet fifty
imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he,
addressing the Englishman.
"No, fifty," replied the latter.
"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of
rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on
this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the
window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"
"Quite right," said the Englishman.
Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the
buttons of his coat and looking down at him- the Englishman was short-
began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.
"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill
to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else
does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"
The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to
accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and
though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on
translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar
of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the
window sill, leaned over, and looked down.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the
stones of the pavement.
"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad
jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.
Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it
easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and
lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he
adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the
right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought
two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was
already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly
head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the
Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older
than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and
angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt.
"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible
man.
Anatole stopped him.
"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed.
Eh?... What then?... Eh?"
Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands,
arranged himself on his seat.
"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words
separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down
there. Now then!"
Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the
bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised
his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped
to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without
taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole
stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways,
pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran
to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to
the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade
though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.
Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same
position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair
touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted
higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was
emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting
yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to
him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made
a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously;
this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the
sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered
still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the
window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered
his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he
was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on
the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.
"It's empty."
He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly.
Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.
"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil
take you!" came from different sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the
money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon
the window sill.
"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he
suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a
bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"
"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.
"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why,
you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.
"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging
the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb
out of the window.
They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone
who touched him was sent flying.
"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit
and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but
now we are all going to -'s."
"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with
us."
And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the
ground, and began dancing round the room with it.
BK1|CH10
CHAPTER X
Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess
Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on
the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the
Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of
Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no
appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's
endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich
relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and
where and where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment
of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a
cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a
time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August,
and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join
them on the march to Radzivilov.
It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs- the
mother and the youngest daughter- both named Nataly. Ever since the
morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going
continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house
on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself
and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the
visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one
another in relays.
The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental
type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing- she had had
twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness,
gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also
seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the
visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not
considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The
count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.
"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"- he
called everyone without exception and without the slightest
variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him
in rank- "I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose
name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be
offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,
mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or
variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful,
clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same
quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned
to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair
toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his
hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how
to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the
weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and
sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a
man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see
some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald
patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the
anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the
large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty
people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and
china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would
call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all
his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table
would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they
should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it."
And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.
"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'
gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The
countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with
her husband's portrait on it.
"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no
more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a
sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."
A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling
daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.
"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...
at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so
delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices,
interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and
the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which
last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of
dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and
Countess Apraksina... and then, again rustling, pass into the
anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation
was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and
celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his
illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna
Pavlovna's reception.
"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such
bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill
him!"
"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the
visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of
Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.
"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor.
"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as
he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible
things that he has been expelled by the police."
"You don't say so!" replied the countess.
"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince
Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up
to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.
Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back
to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's
affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."
"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.
"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the
visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy
woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear
somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some
actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men
do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear
into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the
policeman on his back!"
"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted
the count, dying with laughter.
"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"
Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.
"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the
visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who
amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so
well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has
done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in
spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite
declined: I have my daughters to consider."
"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess,
turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of
inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also
is illegitimate."
The visitor made a gesture with her hand.
"I should think he has a score of them."
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation,
evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went
on in society.
"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a
half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost
count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."
"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the
countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."
"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I
was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the
count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to
the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death- and he is
so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from
Petersburg- no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune,
Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of
rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself.
Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also
my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at
all to the fact.
"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on
some inspection business," remarked the visitor.
"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, that is a
pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich,
hearing how ill he is."
"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count;
and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to
the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that
policeman cut!"
And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly
form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who
always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine
with us!" he said.
BK1|CH11
CHAPTER XI
Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,
but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they
now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already
smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when
suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls
running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a
girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin
frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was
evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far.
Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat
collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump
rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.
The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his
arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.
"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it
is. My dear pet!"
"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with
feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her
husband.
"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your
name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added,
addressing the mother.
This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life-
with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook
her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little
legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers- was just at
that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child
is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her
flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla- not paying the
least attention to her severe remark- and began to laugh. She laughed,
and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she
produced from the folds of her frock.
"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha
managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned
against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter
that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.
"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the
mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and
turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."
Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,
glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.
The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it
necessary to take some part in it.
"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of
yours? A daughter, I suppose?"
Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish
things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.
Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna
Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest
son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya,
his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were
obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the
excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the
back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the
conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of
society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then
they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.
The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from
childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though
not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had
regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and
an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper
lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas
blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find
something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found
his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that
doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was
broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and
how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he
glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her
younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with
suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she
jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet
would carry her. Boris did not laugh.
"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the
carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.
"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered,
returning his smile.
Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump
boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been
disturbed.
BK1|CH12
CHAPTER XII
The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting
the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four
years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up
person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender
little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by
long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a
tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her
slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her
movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and
by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a
pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful
little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest
in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her
eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to
join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile
could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear
that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy
and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha
and Boris, escape from the drawing room.
"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and
pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and
so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his
old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there
was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!
Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.
"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.
"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and
they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My
dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the
hussars."
The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.
"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and
turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from
friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."
He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were
both regarding him with a smile of approbation.
"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us
today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.
It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and
speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.
"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't
wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except
in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.- I don't
know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the
flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady
visitor.
The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any
moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.
"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up!
This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he
rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,"
he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.
The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to
young Rostov.
"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so
dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.
The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish
smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation
without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the
heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of
his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry
glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the
artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All
Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the
conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find
Sonya.
"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their
sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went
out. "Cousinage- dangereux voisinage;"* she added.
*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.
"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people
had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question
no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much
suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might
rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than
the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age,
so dangerous both for girls and boys."
"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.
"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I
have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full
confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who
imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall
always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with
his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he
will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."
"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the
count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by
deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an
hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"
"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor;
"a little volcano!"
"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And
what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth
when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an
Italian to give her lessons."
"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to
train it at that age."
"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our
mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."
"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the
countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently
concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I
were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what
they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be
kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come
running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything.
Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her
elder sister I was stricter."
"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome
elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.
But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally
do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore
unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid,
quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what
she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-
the visitors and countess alike- turned to look at her as if wondering
why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.
"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try
to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.
"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too
clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned
out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.
The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to
dinner.
"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess,
when she had seen her guests out.
BK1|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the
conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation
in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already
growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not
coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps
approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly
among the flower tubs and hid there.
Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a
little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror
examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her
ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while
before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha
was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me,"
thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears,
and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked
her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place,
watching- as under an invisible cap- to see what went on in the world.
She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering
to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened
and Nicholas came in.
"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he,
running up to her.
"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.
"Ah, I know what it is."
"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"
"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like
that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.
Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not
stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with
sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she.
"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are
everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."
"I don't like you to talk like that."
"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him
and kissed her.
"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had
gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.
"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I
have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the
conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.
Boris followed her, smiling.
"What is the something?" asked he.
She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had
thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.
"Kiss the doll," said she.
Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not
reply.
"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went
further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!"
she whispered.
She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity
and fear appeared on her flushed face.
"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,
glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying
from excitement.
Boris blushed.
"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still
more, but he waited and did nothing.
Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him
so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and,
tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.
Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of
the tubs and stood, hanging her head.
"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."
"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.
"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four
years... then I will ask for your hand."
Natasha considered.
"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender
little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"
A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.
"Settled!" replied Boris.
"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"
She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the
adjoining sitting room.
BK1|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she
gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to
invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished
to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood,
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she
returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but
pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.
"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There
are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your
friendship."
Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her
friend's hand.
"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a
favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are
not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."
The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all
hurt.
"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied
as she rose to go to her own room.
But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples
sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully.
Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses
for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at
the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and
Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.
It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love;
but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.
"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You
have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.
"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.
"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued
Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt
ashamed of you."
Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no
one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered
in the room with the inkstand in her hand.
"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and
Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!"
"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,
speaking very gently.
She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to
everyone.
"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"
"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer.
"We don't interfere with you and Berg."
"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be
anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are
behaving with Boris."
"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have
nothing to complain of."
"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really
tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.
(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among
the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she
bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand
it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a
Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by
Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure
is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you
please," she finished quickly.
"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."
"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas- "said
unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the
nursery."
All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.
"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none
to anyone."
"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices
through the door.
The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant
effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been
said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and
scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still
colder and calmer.
In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.
"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses
either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't
last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the
country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows
what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed
everything. I often wonder at you, Annette- how at your age you can
rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those
ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's
quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly
do it."
"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never
know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you
love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a
certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of
those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an
interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two,
three, or four times- till I get what I want. I don't mind what they
think of me."
"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess.
"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my
Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for
him. To whom did you apply?"
"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to
everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she
had endured to gain her end.
"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not
seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I
expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said
the countess, with a smile.
"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna,
"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head
at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear
Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very
kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do
anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way
that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna,
sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and
makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a
penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her
handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have
only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope
now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist
his godson- you know he is Bory's godfather- and allow him something
for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I
shall not be able to equip him."
The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.
"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess,
"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all
alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a
burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."
"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.
"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.
Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall
speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's
really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The
princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There
will just be time."
And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the
most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and
went into the anteroom with him.
"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the
door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me
good luck."
"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the
count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:
"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the
house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite
him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He
says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"
BK1|CH15
CHAPTER XV
"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as
Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the
straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril
Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,
drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and
tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him.
Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future
depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you
so well know how to be."
"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of
it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it
for your sake."
Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the
entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to
be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the
rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old
cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses,
and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency
was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.
"We may as well go back," said the son in French.
"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand
on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.
Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without
taking off his cloak.
"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the
hall porter, I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's
why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my
friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying
here, is he not? Please announce me."
The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and
turned away.
"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to
a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,
who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.
The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a
large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes
briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.
"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a
touch, "you promised me!"
The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.
They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to
the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.
Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall,
were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as
they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and
Prince Vasili came out- wearing a velvet coat with a single star on
his breast, as was his custom when at home- taking leave of a
good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg
doctor, Lorrain.
"Then it is certain?" said the prince.
"Prince, humanum est errare,* but..." replied the doctor, swallowing
his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
*To err is human.
"Very well, very well..."
Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the
doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of
inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow
suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly.
"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our
dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive
look fixed on her.
Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and
perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging
the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a
movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the
patient.
"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It
is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris.
"He wanted to thank you himself."
Boris bowed again politely.
"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you
have done for us."
"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna
Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in
tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed
under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than
he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.
"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing
Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on
in his usual tone of indifference.
"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"
replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque
manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so
quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.
"Are you living with your mother?"
"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding,
"your excellency."
"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said
Anna Mikhaylovna.
"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I
never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that
unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler
too, I am told."
"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic
smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,
but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the
doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again
expressing deep sorrow.
"They give little hope," replied the prince.
"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me
and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this
fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.
Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw
that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's
fortune, and hastened to reassure him.
"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,"
said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern,
"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one
with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She
bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his
final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can
make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if
he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know
how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it
may be for me. I am used to suffering."
Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he
had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid
of Anna Mikhaylovna.
"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna
Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are
expecting a crisis."
"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the
welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a
Christian..."
A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses,
the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of
her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince
Vasili turned to her.
"Well, how is he?"
"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the
princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.
"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy
smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am
at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have
gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.
The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room
at Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position
she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili
to take a seat beside her.
"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the
count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile
and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him
to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the
prince.
"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become
depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young
man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."
He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight
of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.
BK1|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in
Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and
sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.
Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now
been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his
father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade
would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father-
who were never favorably disposed toward him- would have used it to
turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his
arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing
room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the
ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third
read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading- the one who had met
Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were
rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole
on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if
he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading
and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed
precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the
mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her
frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she
foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely
able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the
pattern.
"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"
"I recognize you only too well, too well."
"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,
but unabashed.
"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently
you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."
"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.
"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see
him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready- it is
almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were
busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,
Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.
Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed
and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can
see him."
And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of
the sister with the mole.
Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house.
He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are
going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very
badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very
ill, and you must not see him at all."
Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole
time in his rooms upstairs.
When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his
room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at
the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and
glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his
walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and
gesticulating.
"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger
at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the
rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre- who at that
moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just
effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured
London- could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and
handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left
Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten
him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the
hand with a friendly smile.
"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile.
"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not
well."
"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,"
answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.
Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it
necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least
embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.
"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a
considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.
"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his
son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how
we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an
age..."
"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and
slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna
Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is
Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot."
Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.
"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One
has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well,
now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne
expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon
gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible.
If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things!
Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read
the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.
"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal
than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know
nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy
with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and
your father."
Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his
companion's sake that the latter might say something he would
afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly,
looking straight into Pierre's eyes.
"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on.
"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,
though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."
"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."
Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say
something disconcerting to himself.
"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not
changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is
trying to get something out of the rich man?"
"So it does," thought Pierre.
"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are
quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are
very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that
your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and
neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."
For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he
jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick,
clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a
feeling of mingled shame and vexation.
"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I
know very well..."
But Boris again interrupted him.
"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You
must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being
put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make
it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you
come to dinner at the Rostovs'?"
And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and
extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,
became quite pleasant again.
"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful
fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you
don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we
were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite
understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the
courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your
acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should
have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll
get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I
have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I
am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"
"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked
Boris with a smile.
Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the
same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of
the Boulogne expedition.
A footman came in to summon Boris- the princess was going. Pierre,
in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to
dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his
spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing
up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an
imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance
of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.
As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a
lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man
and made up his mind that they would be friends.
Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her
eyes and her face was tearful.
"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may
I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be
left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces
put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare
him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."
"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.
"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when
they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."
"I don't understand, Mamma- what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked
the son.
"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."
"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"
"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"
"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."
"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.
BK1|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count
Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all
alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.
"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid
who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then
I'll find you another place."
The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating
poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with
her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking
to her with exaggerated politeness.
"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.
"Ask the count to come to me."
The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look
as usual.
"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to
have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras
were not ill-spent. He is worth it!"
He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands
ruffling his gray hair.
"What are your commands, little countess?"
"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. "It's, the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.
"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."
Her face became sad.
"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out
his pocketbook.
"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking
out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.
"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out
in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call
will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"
Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the
count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the
room.
"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the
deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a
moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't
bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean
ones for the countess."
"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing
deeply.
"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me
to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the
count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it
brought at once?"
"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."
"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile
when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible' with
him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."
"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,"
said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."
"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the
count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.
When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money,
all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the
countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something
was agitating her.
"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.
"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is
so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."
"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began,
with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."
Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they- friends from childhood- had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.
BK1|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests,
was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen
into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.
From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were
expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le
terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but
for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was
known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and
Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at
her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less
all without exception respected and feared her.
In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of
war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his
head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers
with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two
neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.
One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and
wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a
most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as
if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his
mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his
eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a
man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to
be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer
of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held
his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled
the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This
was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom
Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had,
teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended."
The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite
occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of,
was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two
loquacious talkers at one another.
"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich,"
said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary
Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases- which was a
peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur
l'etat;* you want to make something out of your company?"
*You expect to make an income out of the government.
"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."
Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain
calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no
direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without
being at all put out of countenance himself or making others
uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he
would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I
should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,
pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
always be the chief desire of everyone else.
"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I
shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies
occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what
can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a
little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting
a smoke ring.
"La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of
his mouth and winking at the count.
*So that squares matters.
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that
Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or
indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards
he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps;
how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as
senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular
he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was
with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not
seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests.
But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his
youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.
"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go- foot or horse- that
I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking
his feet off the sofa.
Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the
drawing room.
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled
guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,* avoid engaging in any
long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in
order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The
host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at
one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who,
or what, they are waiting for- some important relation who has not yet
arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.
*Hors d'oeuvres.
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in
the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come
across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make
him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles
as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in
monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not
notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the
bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering
how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a
policeman.
"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.
"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.
"You have not yet seen my husband?"
"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.
"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very
interesting."
"Very interesting."
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It
was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was
heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.
"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna
entered the room.
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.
"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to
her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned
all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the
count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I
daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old
man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed
to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it
or not...."
Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called
Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up
fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl,
but I like her."
She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge
reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with
the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and
addressed herself to Pierre.
"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high
tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up
her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a
childlike way through his spectacles.
"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell
your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my
evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to
follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.
"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed
and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,
sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."
She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly
keep from laughing.
"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya
Dmitrievna.
The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed
on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them
because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna
Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling
Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples
followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children,
tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving
about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the
guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's
household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the
voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of
the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna
Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At
the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and
Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the
long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg,
and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children,
tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit
vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its
light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not
neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her
duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the
pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their
redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies'
end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end
the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel
of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much
that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with
tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a
heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the
guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting
opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a
great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and
went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the
wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in
a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry
Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of
the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood
before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with
enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.
Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen
look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the
first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny
lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing
why.
Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina,
to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya
wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now
she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what
Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept
looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might
be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember
all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full
description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt
greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin
passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want
any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand
that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted
it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.
BK1|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more
animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had
already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself
seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in
chief.
"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked
Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our
turn next."
The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted
to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's
remark.
"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a
German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He
declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze
danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as
vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word
with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.
Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he
repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:
... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and
absolute aim- to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations- has
now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a
new condition for the attainment of that purpose.
"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of
wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.
"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but
turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and
smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.*[2] Suvorov now- he knew
what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*[3] and where
are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*[4] said he,
continually changing from French to Russian.
*Do you know the proverb?
*[2] That suits us down to the ground.
*[3] Hollow.
*[4] I just ask you that.
"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the
colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen
all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"...
he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he
ended, again turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look
at it, and zere's an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a
young hussar, how do you judge of it?" he added, addressing
Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was being discussed had
turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel.
"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up,
turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as
much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment
facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or
conquer," he concluded, conscious- as were others- after the words
were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for
the occasion and were therefore awkward.
"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.
Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them
and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.
Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.
"That's fine," said he.
"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping
the table.
"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya
Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the
table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the
hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French
are here?"
"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.
"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You
know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."
"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in
God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a
battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried
the whole length of the table.
"That's true!"
Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end
and the men's at the other.
"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you
won't ask!"
"I will," replied Natasha.
Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She
half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to
what was coming, and turning to her mother:
"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,
audible the whole length of the table.
"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her
daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her
sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.
The conversation was hushed.
"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice
sounded still more firm and resolute.
The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook
her fat finger.
"Cossack!" she said threateningly.
Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at
the elders.
"You had better take care!" said the countess.
"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried
boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken
in good part.
Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.
"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and
to Pierre, glancing at him again.
"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.
Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even
Marya Dmitrievna.
"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice
cream."
"Carrot ices."
"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed;
"I want to know!"
Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the
guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer
but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who
had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.
Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be
pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band
again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests,
leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and
reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the
children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs
scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with
redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the
count's study.
BK1|CH20
CHAPTER XX
The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the
count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,
some in the sitting room, some in the library.
The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty
from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at
everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered
round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played
first. After she had played a little air with variations on the
harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and
Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing
something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was
evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.
"What shall we sing?" she said.
"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.
"Well, then,let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But
where is Sonya?"
She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room
ran to look for her.
Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran
to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that
she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage
was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the
Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on
Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy
pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and
sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.
Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's
day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed
down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.
"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And
Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she
began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was
crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and
hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the
blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort
Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.
"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have
come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she
showed a paper she held in her hand- with the verses Nicholas had
written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can
understand... what a soul he has!"
And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.
"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and
Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice...
there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...
one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it
can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the
countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling
Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God
is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so
much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to
her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice
everything, only I have nothing...."
Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in
the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that
she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.
"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true
reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to
you since dinner? Hasn't she?"
"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some
others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to
Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him
to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with
her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."
And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha
lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began
comforting her.
"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you
remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting
room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't
quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be
arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has
married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.
And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all
about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you
cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.
"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she
won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he
doesn't care at all for Julie."
Natasha kissed her on the hair.
Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it
seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin
playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.
"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her
frock and hair.
"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that
had strayed from under her friend's plaits.
Both laughed.
"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"
"Come along!"
"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said
Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"
And she set off at a run along the passage.
Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the
verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran
after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face
and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people
sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.
Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:
At nighttime in the moon's fair glow
How sweet, as fancies wander free,
To feel that in this world there's one
Who still is thinking but of thee!
That while her fingers touch the harp
Wafting sweet music music the lea,
It is for thee thus swells her heart,
Sighing its message out to thee...
A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,
But oh! till then I cannot live!...
He had not finished the last verse before the young people began
to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and
the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.
Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged
him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political
conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.
When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre
said, laughing and blushing:
"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."
"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you
will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the
slender little girl.
While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning
up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly
happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She
was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a
grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had
given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman
(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her
partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.
"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she
crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.
Natasha blushed and laughed.
"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be
surprised at?"
In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs
being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya
Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more
distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves
after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,
entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,
both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony
somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He
drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and
as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped
his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing
the first violin:
"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"
This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his
youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the
anglaise.)
"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite
forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her
curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her
laughter.
And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure
at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout
partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened
his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,
and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more,
prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the
provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling
those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of
the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs- the men on
one side and the women on the other- who with beaming faces had come
to see their master making merry.
"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked
the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.
The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did
not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her
powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the
countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the
dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in
Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming
face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more
into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness
of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on
his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight
exertions- the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms
when turning, or stamp her foot- which everyone appreciated in view of
her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and
livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention
to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were
watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone
by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was
they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the
dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the
musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more
lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya
Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his
partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft
foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a
wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led
by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping
their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.
"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.
"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up
her sleeves and puffing heavily.
BK1|CH21
CHAPTER XXI
While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being
danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while
tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had
a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a
mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man,
preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there
was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside
the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid
whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important
order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who
had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the
count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to
the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov.
The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up
respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an
hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging
their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed
on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince
Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,
escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times
in low tones.
When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all
alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the
other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his
hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him
with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the
long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the
eldest princess.
Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous
whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying
man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or
expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.
"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"
said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was
listening naively to his words.
"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the
lady, adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion
of her own on the subject.
"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament, "replied the priest, passing
his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his
bald head.
"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at
the other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"
"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes
anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."
"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."
The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes
red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a
graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a
table.
"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the
weather. "The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow
one feels as if one were in the country."
"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have
something to drink?"
Lorrain considered.
"Has he taken his medicine?"
"Yes."
The doctor glanced at his watch.
"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,"
and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.
"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an
aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."
"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp.
"And who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.
"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.
Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second
princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to
Lorrain's instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.
"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German,
addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.
Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger
before his nose.
"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with
a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to
understand and state the patient's condition.
Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.
In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning
before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt
pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,
whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white
feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to
bark.
"Ah, is it you, cousin?"
She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely
smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and
covered with varnish.
"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."
"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about
business, Catiche,"* muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on
the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I
must say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."
*Catherine.
"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her
unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the
prince, she prepared to listen.
"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."
"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending
it downwards as was his habit.
It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both
understood without naming.
The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for
her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion
in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up
at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an
expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting
before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of
weariness.
"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn
out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a
very serious talk."
Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,
now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant
expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His
eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly
and at the next glanced round in alarm.
The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony
hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved
not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.
"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"
continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not
without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of
everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love
you all, like children of my own, as you know."
The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the
same dull expression.
"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince
Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at
her. "You know, Catiche, that we- you three sisters, Mamontov, and
my wife- are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it
is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me;
but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for
anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing
to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called."
Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not
make out whether she was considering what he had just said or
whether she was simply looking at him.
"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she
replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow
his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."
"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently,
rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little
table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you
know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he
left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."
"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he
cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."
"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little
table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if
a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for
Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of
the count's services, his request would be granted?..."
The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about
the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.
"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand,
"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew
of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not,
then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate
what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are
opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and
the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything
as the legitimate son."
"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if
anything might happen, only not that.
"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be
the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must
know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether
they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been
overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them,
because..."
"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and
not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you
think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot
inherit... un batard!"* she added, as if supposing that this
translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the
invalidity of his contention.
*A bastard.
"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so
intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a
letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate,
it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count
Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if
the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing
but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!*
That's certain."
*And all that follows therefrom.
"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and
you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the
princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are
saying something witty and stinging.
"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili
impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about
your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I
tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and
the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear
girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,
then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"
(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."
At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;
her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her
voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she
herself evidently did not expect.
"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and
I don't now."
She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.
"And this is gratitude- this is recognition for those who have
sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid!
Fine! I don't want anything, Prince."
"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..."
replied Prince Vasili.
But the princess did not listen to him.
"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could
expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and
ingratitude- the blackest ingratitude- in this house..."
"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince
Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.
"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and
sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has
been intriguing!"
The princees wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand.
She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole
human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.
"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it
was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was
afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to
ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and
not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."
"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who
would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though
he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a
sigh, "I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no
reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this
world one has to be cunning and cruel."
"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."
"No, I have a wicked heart."
"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship
and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself,
and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or
be it but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above
all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to
the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.
You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his
wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help
him and you."
"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing- I know!" cried
the princess.
"That's not the point, my dear."
"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that
Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the
infamous, vile woman!"
"Do not let us lose any time..."
"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here
and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us,
especially about Sophie- I can't repeat them- that it made the count
quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was
then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was
invalid."
"We've got to it at last- why did you not tell me about it sooner?"
"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,"
said the princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I
have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost
shrieked the princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come
worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind.
The time will come!"
BK1|CH22
CHAPTER XXII
While these conversations were going on in the reception room and
the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent
for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)
was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels
rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,
having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he
was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre
followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began
to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him.
He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the
back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two
men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and
hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed
several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house
on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the
coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of
them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed
Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone
staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow.
Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the
count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet
judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre
concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the
stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying
pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men
pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass
and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.
"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna
Mikhaylovna of one of them.
"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were
now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."
"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he
reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room."
Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.
"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her
son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no
less than you do, but be a man!"
"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at
her over his spectacles.
"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done
you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death."
She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust
yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."
Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this
had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who
was already opening a door.
This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the
princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been
in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of
these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past
with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the
princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The
first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid
with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything
in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna
Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where
Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together
talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious
impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of
desperation slammed the door with all her might.
This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear
depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity
that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his
guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly
and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.
"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in
reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.
Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what
"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these
things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit
room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those
sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front
approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and
water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a
censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.
They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian
windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full
length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still
sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one
another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn
Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre
who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.
Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the
decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg
lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even
more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her
the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured.
Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the
count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,
not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and
respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another
priest.
"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the
priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man
is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"
Having said this she went up to the doctor.
"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is
there any hope?"
The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his
shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her
shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved
away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful
and tenderly sad voice, she said:
"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit
and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone
was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind
it.
Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly,
moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna
had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned
to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed
that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him
with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had
never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had
been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an
aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the
doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to
make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as
not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and
to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at
once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a
person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone
expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their
services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and
sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically
on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and
decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in
order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on
his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the
will of those who were guiding him.
Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect
majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three
stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the
morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and
noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never
used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain
whether it was firmly fixed on.
"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is
well!" and he turned to go.
But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated,
not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the
count," yet ashamed to call him "father."
"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my
friend..."
Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"
suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili
in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of
illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went
through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his
whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him,
and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the
door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about,
and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but
resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly
on the arm said:
"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be
administered. Come."
Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed
that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all
followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission
to enter that room.
BK1|CH23
CHAPTER XXIII
Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its
walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the
columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side
and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly
illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening
service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in
that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed,
Pierre saw- covered to the waist by a bright green quilt- the
familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that
gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a
lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his
handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick
hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm
downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb,
and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in
position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over
their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their
hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind
them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their
eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a
vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though
declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she
glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and
all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the
strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid
chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the
carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and
was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each
time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and
resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these
sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"
Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;
the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently
crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the
subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and
the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna
Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she
quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre
was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by
observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand
that held the taper.
Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the
mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and
remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing
Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look
at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be
out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In
the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,
they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the
count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna
stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to
Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he
was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude
implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith,
understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and
even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless
step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers
raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning
sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given
something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people
resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval
Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had
been leaning, and- with air which intimated that he knew what he was
about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse
for them- did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined
the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room
where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the
bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but
returned to their places one after the other before the service was
concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to
the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that
what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way
essential.
The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest
was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received
the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as
before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and
whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.
Pierre heard her say:
"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be
impossible..."
The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and
servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face
with its gray mane- which, though he saw other faces as well, he had
not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He
judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the
invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.
"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the
servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath.
Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the
bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the
weight they were carrying were too much for them.
As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young
man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the
dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders,
raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his
gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow
and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic
expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the
same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had
sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly
with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze
fixed itself upon nothing.
After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who
had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched
Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on
which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the
ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the
pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk
quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing
straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not
be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that
as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too
much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced
inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with
her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to
send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to
touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the
large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of
the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at
Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna
with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre
obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna
Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively
symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that
his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to
look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed
at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna
Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the
pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the
father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre
seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's
face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth
was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death
his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct,
hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's
eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,
then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring
whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick
man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who
stood constantly at the head of the bed.
"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up
to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.
Pierre rose to help him.
While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back
helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward.
Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded
that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his
dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's
terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a
feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his
features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this
smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling
in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on
to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.
"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the
princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."
Pierre went out.
BK1|CH24
CHAPTER XXIV
There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili
and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of
Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre
and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the
princess hide something as she whispered:
"I can't bear the sight of that woman."
"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said
Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor
Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."
To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic
squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the
small drawing room.
"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup
of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of
restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese
handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid
in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count
Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre
well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors
and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not
know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the
ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds
and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the
brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several
times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one
small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the
middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not
merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word
and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what
was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though
he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his
monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the
reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest
princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a
short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside
the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.
"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not
necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the
same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.
"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but
impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other
from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment
when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul
is already prepared..."
Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar
attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which
were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching
violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the
two ladies were saying.
"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases.
You know how fond the count is of her."
"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the
two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid
portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is
in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."
She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to
bar her path.
"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the
portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.
"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je
vous en conjure..."
The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the
portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the
princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna
Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost
none of its honeyed firmness and softness.
"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place
in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"
"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so
loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled.
"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to
interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room?
Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the
portfolio.
But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold
on the portfolio, and changed her grip.
Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise,
"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you."
The princess let go.
"And you too!"
But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.
"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will
go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"
"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn
sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your
opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite
close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the
princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of
Prince Vasili.
"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince
Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."
"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna
Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.
Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.
At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so
long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and
banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed
out wringing her hands.
"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you
leave me alone with him!"
Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping,
quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom.
The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed
her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard
face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression
showed an irrepressible hatred.
"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been
waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her
handkerchief and rushed from the room.
Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre
was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand.
Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as
if in an ague.
"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there
was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in
it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I
am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all!
Death is awful..." and he burst into tears.
Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow,
quiet steps.
"Pierre!" she said.
Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his
forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:
"He is no more...."
Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.
"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as
tears."
She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one
could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned
he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.
In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:
"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.
But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in
command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I
know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but
it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."
Pierre was silent.
"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not
been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle
promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But
he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your
father's wish?"
Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in
silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna
Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the
morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details
of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would
herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but
edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so
touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not
know which had behaved better during those awful moments- the father
who so remembered everything and everybody at last and last and had
spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been
pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to
hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but
it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count
and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest
princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers
and as a great secret.
BK1|CH25
CHAPTER XXV
At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the
arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but
this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the
old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich
(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor
Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously
with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the
capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that
anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from
Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He
used to say that there are only two sources of human vice- idleness
and superstition, and only two virtues- activity and intelligence.
He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these
two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry
till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time
was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs,
solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,
working in the garden, or superintending the building that was
always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition
facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to
the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under
precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at
the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs,
the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being
a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted
men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no
influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the
province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to
visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the
architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared
punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber
experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the
enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather
small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray
eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his
shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.
On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,
Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed
for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and
repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and
every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.
An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose
quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."
Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess
timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused
at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after
glancing round continued his work.
The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The
large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted
bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while
standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with
tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around- all
indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of
the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and
the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince
still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age.
After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the
pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to
the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never
gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly
cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,
said severely:
"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book
containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a
chair with his foot.
"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a
scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.
The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.
"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly,
taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above
the table, onto which he threw it.
At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the
princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.
"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his
still sound, yellowish teeth.
"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and
a timid smile.
"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said
the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the
third!"
"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still
more and holding out the letter.
"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing
the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward
him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.
"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his
daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,
so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of
old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these
triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."
The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes
glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went,
and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened
that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's
further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was
the teacher's fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every
day: the princess' eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear
anything, but was only conscious of her stern father's withered face
close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only
of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem
in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which
he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control
himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become
vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.
The princess gave a wrong answer.
"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book
aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up
and down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.
He drew up his chair. and continued to explain.
"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,
having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's
lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam!
I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and
you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the
nonsense out of your head."
She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an
uncut book from the high desk.
"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has
sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I
have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."
He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.
Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared
expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly
face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood
miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers.
The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the
geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from
her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina
who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party.
Julie wrote in French:
Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is
separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my
happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance
separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart
rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions
around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in
my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last
summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa?
Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength
from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so
well and seem to see before me as I write?
Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the
mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful
figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular
hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me,"
thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie
did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes- large, deep and
luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts
of warm light)- were so beautiful that very often in spite of the
plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than
that of beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of
her own eyes- the look they had when she was not thinking of
herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural
expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading:
All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is
already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on
their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg
and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances
of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the
peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the
Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing
of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations
nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his
enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the
university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in
spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great
grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so
noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds
nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank
and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with
him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to
my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell
you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too
fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant
joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally
the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever
to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic
and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!
The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old
Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses
have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur
Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been
recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and
possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince
Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he
returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.
I confess I understand very little about all these matters of
wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom
we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count
Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I
am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the
mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies
themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed
to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have
amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't
even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as
the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have
no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a
while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the
seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither
more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to
reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on
you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you
will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.
He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is
all I have been able to find out about him.
But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,
and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the
mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.
Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to
grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul.
Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments
to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.
JULIE
P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.
The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her
luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then
she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She
took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is
the reply she wrote, also in French:
Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great
delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which
you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual
effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say,
if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me?
Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why
do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for
that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I
understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I
cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me
that Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is
worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful
eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl
like yourself.
The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and
my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last
representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own
turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as
late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!
I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He
always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the
quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part
played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear
friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to
go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still
more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches- to
what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire
most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A
thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and
which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among
some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding
cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading
what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never
could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their
minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts
and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration
quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the
Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they
contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the
terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this
flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let
us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which
our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to
conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less
we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,
who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we
seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner
will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.
My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me
that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince
Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you,
dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution
to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should
the Almighty lay the duties of wife and wife and mother upon me I
shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without
disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may
give me for husband.
I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy
arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief
one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy
war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only
where you are- at the heart of affairs and of the world- is the talk
all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature- which
townsfolk consider characteristic of the country- rumors of war are
heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and
countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day
before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I
witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts
enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should
have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who
were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though
mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached
love and forgiveness of injuries- and that men attribute the
greatest merit to skill in killing one another.
Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most
Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!
MARY
"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already
dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling
Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and
with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous,
mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless,
lighthearted, and self-satisfied.
"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and
evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with
exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael
Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."
"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to
warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge
him and would not have others do so."
The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five
minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the
sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock,
as the day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played
the clavichord.
BK1|CH26
CHAPTER XXVI
The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the
snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side
of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult
passages- twenty times repeated- of a sonata by Dussek.
Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to
the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little
wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old
Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the
antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and
hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival
nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed
order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as
Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's
habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured
himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.
"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room,"
he said.
The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes
and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak
just as merrily and prettily as ever.
"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around
with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.
"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at
Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.
"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by
surprise."
Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.
"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who
kissed his hand.
Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord
came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.
"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let
her know."
"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the
little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my
sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"
They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the
sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped
and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.
The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the
middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the
sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who
had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each
other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they
happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her
hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready
to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and
frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two
women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late,
seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and
again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince
Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle
Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease,
but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and
apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been
otherwise at this meeting.
"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then
laughed. "I dreamed last night..."- "You were not expecting us?..."-
"Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."
"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I
did not see you."
Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another,
and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess
Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the
loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful
at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.
The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip
continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary
and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of
glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they
had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in
her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had
left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would
have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that
Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor
for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess
Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful
eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was
following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words.
In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she
addressed her brother:
"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.
Lise sighed too.
"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.
"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had
promotion..."
Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of
thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her
figure.
"Is it certain?" she said.
The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said:
"Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."
Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's
and unexpectedly again began to cry.
"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?
Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the
same?"
"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"
answered the princess joyfully.
"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the
lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which
showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he
was aware of his weaknesses.
"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and
my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her
lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.
When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the
old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his
father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor
of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments
while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in
old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and
when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the
contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the
animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting
on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle,
entrusting his head to Tikhon.
"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old
man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was
holding fast to plait, would allow.
"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like
this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he
held out his cheek.
The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He
used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver- before dinner,
golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his
thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father
on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's
favorite topic- making fun of the military men of the day, and more
particularly of Bonaparte.
"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is
pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his
father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"
"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy
from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."
"Thank God," said his son smiling.
"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued,
returning to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to
fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'"
Prince Andrew smiled.
"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile
that showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from
loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle
down!"
"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to
see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand.
"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there
and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's
their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About
Mikhelson's army I understand- Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous
expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is
neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from
his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who
ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of
Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"
Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began- at first
reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from
habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on-
to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained
how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as
to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part
of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two
hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand
Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty
thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and
how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the
French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least
interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to
it continued to dress while walking about, and three times
unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white
one, the white one!"
This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he
wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:
"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head
reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."
The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his
description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old
age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."*
*"Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."
His son only smiled.
"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only
telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,
not worse than this one."
"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,
meditatively and rapidly:
"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."
BK1|CH27
CHAPTER XXVII
At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the
dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle
Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who
by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though
the position of that insignificant individual was such as could
certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who
generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely
admitted even important government officials to his table, had
unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner
to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory
that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his
daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or
I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael
Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.
In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was
exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen- one
behind each chair- stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head
butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making
signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the
door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at
a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of
the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a
badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist
belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown- an alleged
descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew,
looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a
man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original
as to be amusing.
"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had
come up to him.
Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not
understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired
her with reverence and was beyond question.
"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.
"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"
Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's
criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were
heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily
as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of
his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the
great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from
the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes
from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and
rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar
enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired
in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly
on the back of her neck.
"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into
her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit
down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"
He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman
moved the chair for her.
"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded
figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"
He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips
only and not with his eyes.
"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he
said.
The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She
was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,
and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual
acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away
giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town
gossip.
"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has
cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.
As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more
sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had
formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael
Ivanovich.
"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of
it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling
me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I
never thought much of him."
Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such
things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a
peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked
inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.
"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to
the architect.
And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and
the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced
not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know
the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an
insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no
longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also
convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no
real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day
were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily
bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and
listened to him with evident pleasure.
"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov
himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not
know how to escape?"
"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked
away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,
Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would
have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled
the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those
Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what
chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and
your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call
in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The
German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the
Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year
to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the
Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows
have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you,
but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great
commander among them! Hm!..."
"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince
Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may
laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great
generall"
"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy
with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you
Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says same thing."
"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.
The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.
"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got
splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only
idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began
everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one- except one
another. He made his reputation fighting them."
And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to
him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son
made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were
presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.
He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how
this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could
know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European
military and political events.
"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state
of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't
sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours
shown his skill?" he concluded.
"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.
"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's
another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he
exclaimed in excellent French.
"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"
"Dieu sait quand reviendra"... hummed the prince out of tune and,
with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.
The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of
the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her
father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she
took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.
"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I
am afraid of him."
"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.
BK1|CH28
CHAPTER XXVIII
Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not
altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little
princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling
coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms
assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing
the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those
things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a
large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a
saber- a present from his father who had brought it from the siege
of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in
very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with
tapes.
When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men
capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At
such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince
Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind
him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking
straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear
going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?- perhaps both,
but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing
footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped
at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his
usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread
of Princess Mary that he heard.
"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she
had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another
talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You
are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,"
she added, as if to explain such a question.
She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously
strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be
Andrusha- the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in
childhood.
"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a
smile.
"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.
Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting
down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a
dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."
Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical
and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.
"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from
them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated
in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter
into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.*
Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,
to be parted from her husband and be left alone the country, in her
condition! It's very hard."
*To understand all is to forgive all.
Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at
those we think we thoroughly understand.
"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he
replied.
"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other
life, and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young
society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her
life, all alone- for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what
poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best
society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."
"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince
Andrew.
"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be
pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her,
and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am
even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She
and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle
and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne
says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as
for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless
after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father
likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads
splendidly."
"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes
makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked
suddenly.
Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.
"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.
"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting
very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their
father in order to puzzle or test his sister.
"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of
intellectual pride," said the princess, following the train of her own
thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation- "and that's a
great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what
feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I
am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as
happy as I am."
Her brother shook his head incredulously.
"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,
Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't
understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what
is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing
that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of
improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was
a monk he received and had a long talk with."
"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your
powder," said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.
"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.
Andrew..." she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a
great favor to ask of you."
"What is it, dear?"
"No- promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble
and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,
Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet
taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were
the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request
was granted.
She looked timidly at her brother.
"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew,
as if guessing what it was about.
"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as
you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our
grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out
what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"
"Of course. What is it?"
"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will
never take it off. Do you promise?"
"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck...
To please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the
pained expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he
repented and added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."
"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring
you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a
voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before
her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour
in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.
She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.
"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."
Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes
lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her
brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew
understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of
tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.
"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down
again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.
"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you
always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so
sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."
"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or
blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?"
Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as
if she felt guilty.
"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to.
And I am sorry for that," he went on.
The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried
to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the
little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her
forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had
complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After
crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.
"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and
never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach
myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in
whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the
truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No!
But why this is so I don't know..."
As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed
her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and
unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over
her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.
"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or- go and wake and I'll come
in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take
these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."
Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:
"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him
to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have
been answered."
"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come
immediately."
On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected
one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne
smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic
and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.
"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason
blushing and dropping her eyes.
Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger
suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at
her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt
that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he
reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry
voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.
She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long
self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time.
"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her
mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old
age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"
This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh
Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of
others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little
princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work
in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg
reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her
hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered
him and continued her chatter.
The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn
night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.
Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense
house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The
domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to
the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in
the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne,
Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been
called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to
him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.
When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age
spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but
his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.
"Going?" And he went on writing.
"I've come to say good-by."
"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"
"What do you thank me for?"
"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron
strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went
on writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have
anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together," he
added.
"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your
hands..."
"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."
"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur....
Let him be here...."
The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed
his stern eyes on his son.
"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said
Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases
only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been
telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."
"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what
he was writing. "I'll do it."
He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to
laugh.
"It's a bad business, eh?"
"What is bad, Father?"
"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.
"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.
"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like
that; one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you
know it yourself."
He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it,
looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see
through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.
The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him.
The old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and
throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed
rapidity.
"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your
mind easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.
Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his
father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his
son.
"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done
shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.* I
have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not
keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember
and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all
right- serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone
if he is in disfavor. Now come here."
*Kutuzov.
He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his
son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised
the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled
with his bold, tall, close handwriting.
"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;
hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond
and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of
Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you
to read when I am gone. You will find them useful."
Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long
time yet. He felt that he must not say it.
"I will do it all, Father," he said.
"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced
him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt
me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a
querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not
behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"
"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a
smile.
The old man was silent.
"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm
killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you-
as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."
"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.
They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were
fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of
the old prince's face.
"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry
voice, opening his door.
"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment
at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white
dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.
Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.
"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.
And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,:
"Now go through your performance."
"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and
looking with dismay at her husband.
He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.
He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her
face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.
"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the
hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.
The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne
chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law,
still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through
which Prince Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his
direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent
sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince
Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of
the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.
"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the
unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed
the door.
BOOK TWO: 1805
CHAPTER I
In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and
towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly
arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and
burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the
headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.
On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just
reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be
inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance
of the locality and surroundings- fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled
roofs, and hills in the distance- and despite the fact that the
inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not
Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment
preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.
On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received
that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march.
Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental
commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in
marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the
battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the
principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low
enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending
and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the
adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by
morning the regiment- instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it
had been on its last march the day before- presented a well-ordered
array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty,
had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness.
And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the
commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on
every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of
articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only
one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was
the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots
were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the
regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not
been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched
some seven hundred miles.
The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and
thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider
from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new
uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold
epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive
shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the
most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line
and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was
plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and
that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to
indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair
sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.
"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the
battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain
that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night.
However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?"
The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.
"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."
"What?" asked the commander.
At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had
been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an
aide-decamp followed by a Cossack.
The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been
clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief
wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on
the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation
whatever.
A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the
day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army
of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering
this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of
his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the
troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the
regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the
commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know
these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that
the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and
that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On
hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged
his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.
"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.
"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was
said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully
to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping
resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice
accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?"
he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently
relating to the personage he was referring to.
"In an hour's time, I should say."
"Shall we have time to change clothes?"
"I don't know, General...."
The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered
the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders
ran off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the
greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares
that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and
stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and
fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and
pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and
drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.
In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had
become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his
jerky steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a
distance.
"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander
of the third company!"
"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!...
commander to the general... third company to the commander." The words
passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing
officer.
When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination
in a cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer
appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged
man and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on
his toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the
uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not
learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was
evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The
general looked the captain up and down as he came up panting,
slackening his pace as he approached.
"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"
shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and
pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat
of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been
after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place?
Eh? I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade....
Eh...?"
The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,
pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this
pressure lay his only hope of salvation.
"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as
a Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.
"Your excellency..."
"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your
excellency?... nobody knows."
"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to
the ranks," said the captain softly.
"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?
If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the
others."
"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."
"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the
regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says
a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I
beg you to dress your men decently."
And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his
jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display
of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further
excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished
badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the
third company.
"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted
the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there
were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray
uniform.
Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with
his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.
"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his
coat... the ras..." he did not finish.
"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..."
Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.
"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"
"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing
tones.
The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became
silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.
"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as
he turned away.
BK2|CH2
CHAPTER II
"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.
The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the
stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle,
righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute
countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment
fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.
"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking
voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment,
and welcome for the approaching chief.
Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a
high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs
and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped
the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian
general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian
black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov
and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled
slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as
if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the
regimental commander did not exist.
The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as
with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence
the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment
roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all
became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment
moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,
walked between the ranks.
From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief
and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and
from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals,
bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and
from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the
commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a
subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander.
Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the
regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the
same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and
stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots.
Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few
friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war,
sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several
times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian
general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming
anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.
The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to
miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.
Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to
be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen
talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the
commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince
Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,
extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.
Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar
officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and
without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,
watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every
movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar
started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed
and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.
Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which
were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the
third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected
this, involuntarily came closer to him.
"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had
been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.
One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself
more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the
regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed
him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not
have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him,
and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him
nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile
flitting over his scarred and puffy face.
"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you
satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander.
And the latter- unconscious that he was being reflected in the
hussar officer as in a looking glass- started, moved forward, and
answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!"
"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking
away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."
The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this
and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of
the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his
expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help
laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete
control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a
grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent
expression.
The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently
trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from
among the suite and said in French:
"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the
ranks in this regiment."
"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.
Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat,
did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired
soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks,
went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.
"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.
"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.
"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your
duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you
deserve well."
The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as
boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by
their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates
a commander in chief so widely from a private.
"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,
ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault
and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"
Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had
turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned
away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said
to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he
was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away
and went to the carriage.
The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their
appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and
clothes and to rest after their hard marches.
"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the
regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its
quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.
(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily
over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's
service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on
parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very
pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.
"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the
captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where
two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end
of a gun at Ismail.
"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him- he may be quite
easy. And tell me, please- I've been meaning to ask- how is to ask-
how is he behaving himself, and in general..."
"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your
excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin.
"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.
"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day
he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a
wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."
"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one
must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important
connections... Well, then, you just..."
"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile
that he understood his commander's wish.
"Well, of course, of course!"
The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and,
reining in his horse, said to him:
"After the next affair... epaulettes."
Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the
mocking smile on his lips change.
"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup
of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could
hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company
and overtook the next one.
"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said
Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.
"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the
regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).
The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected
the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could
be heard on every side.
"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"
"And so he is! Quite blind!"
"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...
he noticed everything..."
"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."
"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were
smeared with chalk- as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as
they do the guns."
"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You
were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."
"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't
know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are
putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte
will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool.
You'd better listen more carefully!"
"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is
turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat
cooked before we reach our quarters."
"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"
"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend!
Ah, well, never mind, here you are."
"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four
miles without eating."
"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still
and are drawn along."
"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all
seemed to be Poles- all under the Russian crown- but here they're
all regular Germans."
"Singers to the front " came the captain's order.
And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A
drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and
flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing
with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and
concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father
Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now
being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father
Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov."
Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms
as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer- a lean,
handsome soldier of forty- looked sternly at the singers and screwed
up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on
him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but
precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds,
suddenly flung it down and began:
"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"
"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet
player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the
front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his
shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone.
The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously,
marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the
creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard.
Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in
chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and
he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and
the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men.
In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage
passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted
notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in
time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all
who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar
cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander,
fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.
Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to
the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a
private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov
had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the
cordiality of an old friend.
"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making
his horse keep pace with the company.
"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."
The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy
gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of
Dolokhov's reply.
"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.
"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto
the staff?"
"I was attached; I'm on duty."
Both were silent.
"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the
song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.
Their conversation would probably have been different but for the
effect of that song.
"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.
"The devil only knows! They say so."
"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song
demanded.
"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said
Zherkov.
"Why, have you too much money?"
"Do come."
"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get
reinstated."
"Well, that's only till the first engagement."
"We shall see."
They were again silent.
"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the
staff..."
Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg-
I'll take it!"
"Well, never mind; I only..."
"And I only..."
"Good-by."
"Good health..."
"It's a long, long way.
To my native land..."
Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly
from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down,
galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping
time to the song.
BK2|CH3
CHAPTER III
On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into
his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers
relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the
letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in
command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the
room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of
the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread
out.
"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this
exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with
the conversation in French.
"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of
expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each
deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened
with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if
the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the
Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long
ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me
personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command
of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful
general- of whom Austria has so many- and to lay down all this heavy
responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,
General."
And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at
liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,
but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole
point."
The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to
reply in the same tone.
"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that
contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your
excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by
His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the
splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have
been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently
prearranged sentence.
Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.
"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with
which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine
that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a
leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive
victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov.
The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an
Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the
unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an
Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on
blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that
he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had
received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated
strategically the position of the army was very favorable.
"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew.
"Please have a look at it"- and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about
the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following
passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:
We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men
with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech.
Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage
of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not
cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line
of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his
intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful
ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the
Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in
conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the
fate he deserves.
Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at
the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.
"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect
the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have
done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round
at the aide-de-camp.
"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince
Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports
from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is
one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he
said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French
out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements
of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."
Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from
the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have
liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,
stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.
Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia,
he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his
face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of
his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man
who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is
occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed
more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and
glance were brighter and more attractive.
Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very
kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the
other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more
serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade,
Prince Andrew's father.
Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his
industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to
have such a subordinate by me.
On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army
generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two
quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be
different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great
things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with
them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,
disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But
among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that
they respected and even feared him.
Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers
in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp
on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.
"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.
"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not
advancing."
"And why is it?"
Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.
"Any news from Mack?"
"No."
"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."
"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.
But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the
order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,
who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.
Prince Andrew stopped short.
"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general
speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and
advancing straight toward the inner door.
"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly
up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom
shall I announce?"
The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was
rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.
"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.
The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He
took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out
the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and
threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if
asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched
his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with
affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer
sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened
and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged
head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making
long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.
"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.
Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly
immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a
wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head
respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before
him, and closed the door himself behind him.
The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been
beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be
correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various
directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had
hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.
Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief
interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack
and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the
campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian
army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part
he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the
thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's
time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian
encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that
Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian
troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero
being disgraced.
Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward
his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the
corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag
Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.
"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale
face and glittering eyes.
"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.
Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward
them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian
general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the
Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived
the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for
the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov,
pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,
"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please
make way!"
The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid
embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly
appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.
"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and
addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate
you."
He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with
the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.
The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing
the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's
attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.
"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived,
quite well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing
with a beaming smile to his head.
The general frowned, turned away, and went on.
"Gott, wie naiv!"* said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.
*"Good God, what simplicity!"
Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but
Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and
turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of
Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the
Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.
"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said
sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent
your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in
my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."
Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they
gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.
"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.
"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski,
and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to
say.
"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to
soothe him.
"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his
excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers
serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and
grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely
lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille
hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la
le mot pour rire,"* he said, as if strengthening his views by this
French sentence. "C' est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet
individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour
vous.*[2] Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he
added in Russian- but pronouncing the word with a French accent-
having noticed that Zherkov could still hear him.
*"Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,
and you find that a cause for jesting!"
*[2] "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom
you have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."
He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he
turned and went out of the corridor.
BK2|CH4
CHAPTER IV
The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The
squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in
the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were
assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known
throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet
Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had
lived with the squadron commander.
On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the
news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this
squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at
cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early
in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet
uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg
over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in
the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang
down and called to his orderly.
"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up
headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he
continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted
young people show to everyone when they are happy.
"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his
head.
"Mind, walk him up and down well!"
Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had
already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's
head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that
it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his
flank, and lingered for a moment.
"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and
holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the
porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork
in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his
face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon
gut Morgen!"* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to
greet the young man.
*"A very good morning! A very good morning!"
"Schon fleissig?"* said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile
which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!
Kaiser Alexander hoch!"*[2] said he, quoting words often repeated by
the German landlord.
*"Busy already?"
*[2] "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah
for Emperor Alexander!"
The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and
waving it above his head cried:
"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"*
*"And hurrah for the whole world!"
Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and ctied
laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German
cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging
for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with
joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of
their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to
his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.
"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly,
whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.
"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing,"
answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early
to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's
lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"
"Yes, bring some."
Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!"
said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw
Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face,
sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore
an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a
crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch
gloomily, hanging his head.
"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"
"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.
"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.
"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and
have seen Fraulein Mathilde."
"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a
damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill
luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on.
Hullo there! Tea!"
Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong
teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his
thick tangled black hair.
"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed
"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both
hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."
He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in
his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while
he continued to shout.
"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles
it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"
He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it
away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked
cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.
"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one
to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's
there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy
boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a
respectful cough.
"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.
Denisov's face puckered still more.
"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in
it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove
the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the
quartermaster.
Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new
coins in separate piles, began counting them.
"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came
Denisov's voice from the next room.
"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping
voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same
squadron, entered the room.
Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little
hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been
transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very
well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him
and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to
the man.
"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook
was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)
The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in
the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.
"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.
"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the
horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half
that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he
added.
"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and
show you what kind of rivet to use."
"Yes, please do," said Rostov.
"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse
you'll thank me for."
"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid
Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.
In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the
threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing
Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder
with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned
and gave a shudder of disgust.
"Ugh! I don't like that fellow"' he said, regardless of the
quartermaster's presence.
Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but
what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to
Telyanin.
Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had
left him, rubbing his small white hands.
"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he
entered.
"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting
up and looking carelessly about him.
"I have."
"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about
yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"
"Not yet. But where are you off to?"
"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.
They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant
explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.
When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on
the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a
sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am
witing to her."
He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,
evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to
write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.
"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We
are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God,
one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send
him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to
him not in the least abashed.
"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the
quartermaster for the money."
Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.
"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the
puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.
"Seven new and three old imperials."
"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you
sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.
"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said
Rostov, blushing.
"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled
Denisov.
"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will
offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.
"No, I tell you."
And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.
"Where have you put it, Wostov?"
"Under the lower pillow."
"It's not there."
Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.
"That's a miwacle."
"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the
pillows one at a time and shaking them.
He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.
"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you
kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it
just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.
"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."
"But it isn't?..."
"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget
it. Feel in your pockets."
"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov,
"but I remember putting it there."
Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and
under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of
the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the
latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found
Denisov glanced at Rostov.
"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."
Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and
instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested
somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not
draw breath.
"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant
and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.
"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!"
shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man
with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you,
I'll flog you all."
Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled
on his saber, and put on his cap.
"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his
orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.
"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov,
going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused,
thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted
at, seized his arm.
"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood
out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The
purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."
"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and
went to the door.
"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov,
rushing at the cadet to restrain him.
But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though
Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his
face.
"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling
voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it
is not so, then..."
He could not finish, and ran out of the room.
"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words
Rostov heard.
Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.
"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's
orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the
cadet's troubled face.
"No, nothing."
"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.
The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and
Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was
an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to
it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.
In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish
of sausages and a bottle of wine.
"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and
raising his eyebrows.
"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;
and he sat down at the nearest table.
Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in
the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of
knives and the munching of the lieutenant.
When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a
double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white,
turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his
eyebrows gave it to the waiter.
"Please be quick," he said.
The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.
"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost
inaudible, voice.
With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him
the purse.
"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly
pale, and added, "Look at it, young man."
Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in
it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his
usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.
"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these
wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well,
let me have it, young man, I'm going."
Rostov did not speak.
"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite
decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."
He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go
of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into
the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his
mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in
my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."
"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted
brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes.
Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to
Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.
"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost
dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took
it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.
"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.
But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an
entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of
doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to
pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun
had to be completed.
"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered
Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room.
"We must have an explanation..."
"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.
"I..."
Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his
eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not
rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.
"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,
take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and
mother!..."
Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the
room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced
his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you
do it?"
"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.
"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take
the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.
BK2|CH5
CHAPTER V
That same evening there was an animated discussion among the
squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters.
"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!"
said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and
many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with
excitement.
The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks
for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.
"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I
lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on
duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me
apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it
beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."
"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted
the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.
"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an
officer has stolen..."
"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of
other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but
I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that
here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying- so
let him give me satisfaction..."
"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the
point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet
to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"
Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the
conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered
the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.
"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other
officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel
was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."
"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."
"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and
must apologize."
"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.
"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and
severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him
but to the whole regiment- all of us- you're to blame all round. The
case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken
advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the
officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and
disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of
one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like
that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what
was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear
fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth
the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish
to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty
a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever
Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!
You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the
whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have
been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and
tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your
fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd
officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?
It's not the same!"
Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked
with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.
"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued
the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and,
God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of
the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old
fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take
offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"
And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.
"That's twue, devil take it" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,
Wostov, now then!"
Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one
officer and then at the other.
"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand.
You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of
the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me
the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame,
to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..."
"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning
round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.
"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."
"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address
Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and
apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"
"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,"
said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I
can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little
boy asking forgiveness?"
Denisov began to laugh.
"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay
for your obstinacy," said Kirsten.
"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling.
I can't..."
"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has
become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.
"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list
tomowwow," muttered Denisov.
"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said
the staff captain.
"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!"
shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.
Just then Zherkov entered the room.
"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.
"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his
whole army."
"It's not true!"
"I've seen him myself!"
"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"
"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how
did you come here?"
"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,
Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on
Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just
come out of a hot bath."
"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."
The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by
Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.
"We're going into action, gentlemen!"
"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"
BK2|CH6
CHAPTER VI
Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges
over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October
23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the
Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were
defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.
It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out
before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the
bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,
and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects
could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down
below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed
houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed
jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels,
an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the
confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky
left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic
background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a
convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on
the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be
discerned.
Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in
command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the
country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who
had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was
sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied
him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was
treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers
gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish
fashion on the wet grass.
"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's
a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski
was saying.
"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased
to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely
place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a
splendid house!"
"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take
another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining
the countryside- "See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look
there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging
something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident
approval.
"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like,"
added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be
to slip in over there."
He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed
and gleamed.
"That would be fine, gentlemen!"
The officers laughed.
"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls
among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"
"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,
laughing.
Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out
something to the general, who looked through his field glass.
"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the
field glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired
on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"
On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and
from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant
report of a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the
crossing.
Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.
"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.
"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him,
"our men have been wasting time."
"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.
"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order
that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that
they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the
inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."
"Very good," answered Nesvitski.
He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the
knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.
"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who
watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the
hill.
"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said
the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to
pass the time."
"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.
In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and
began loading.
"One!" came the command.
Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening
metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our
troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little
smoke showing the spot where it burst.
The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone
got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as
plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of
the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came
fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the
solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a
single joyous and spirited impression.
BK2|CH7
CHAPTER VII
Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge,
where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who
had alighted from his horse and whose big body was body was jammed
against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood
a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each
time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed
him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he
could do was to smile.
"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy
soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were
crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!
You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"
But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted
at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to
the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder
to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a
dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the
rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying
round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on
the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder
straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,
under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and
listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud
that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the
monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of
the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different
from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of
wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a
townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like
a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage
wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,
moved across the bridge.
"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are
there many more of you to come?"
"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,
with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.
"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now,"
said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to
scratch yourself."
That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a
cart.
"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an
orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.
And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry
soldiers who had evidently been drinking.
"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt
end of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said
gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.
"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud
laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who
had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.
"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll
all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.
"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young
soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I
felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that
frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened.
That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had
gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a
German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine
brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A
woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl
with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently
these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes
of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was
passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two
young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly
thoughts about the women.
"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"
"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German,
who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast
eyes.
"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"
"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"
"I have seen as much before now, mate!"
"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an
apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.
The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.
"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.
The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on
the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed.
When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with
the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens,
the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the
bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.
"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the
soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?
It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed
in too"- different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men
looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the
bridge.
Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski
suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...
something big, that splashed into the water.
"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly,
looking round at the sound.
"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.
The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon
ball.
"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of
the way! Make way!"
With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting
continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make
way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and
those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed
still harder from behind.
"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from
behind him.
Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but
separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red
and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak
hanging jauntily over his shoulder.
"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov
evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot
whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a
small bare hand as red as his face.
"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"
"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his
white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which
twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting
white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his
hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider
let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of
the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!
I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber
from its scabbard and flourishing it
The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and
Denisov joined Nesvitski.
"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had
ridden up to him.
"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.
"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to
fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."
"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's
new cloak and saddlecloth.
Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that
diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.
"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth,
and scented myself."
The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the
determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted
frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through
to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the
bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the
order, and having done this he rode back.
Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.
Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the
ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw
nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,
resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in
front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to
emerge on his side of it.
The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the
trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,
estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually
encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past
them in regular order.
"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.
"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked
another.
"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose
prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.
"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine
cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the
mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more
like a bird than a man."
"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look
fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent
under the weight of his knapsack.
"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"
the hussar shouted back.
BK2|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing
together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last
the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last
battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars
remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could
be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible
from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which
the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile
away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of
our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the
high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These
were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at
a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they
tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought
only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking
at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the
enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun
was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around
it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of
the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between
the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An
empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them.
The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,
and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the
more clearly felt.
"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line
dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and
death. And what is there? Who is there?- there beyond that field, that
tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to
know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner
or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is
there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other
side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and
are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So
thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the
enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness
of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.
On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon
rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron.
The officers who had been standing together rode off to their
places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence
fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and
at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second
and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the
hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads
of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not
look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of
command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so
different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the
stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads
glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression.
Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common
expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and
mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if
threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball
flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook- a handsome
horse despite its game leg- had the happy air of a schoolboy called up
before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he
will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear,
bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under
fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.
"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight!
Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept
turning his horse in front of the squadron.
The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole
short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in
which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually
did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second
bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown
back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into
the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling
backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the
squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their
pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,
steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long
mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than
usual.
"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a
fight. You'll see- we shall retire."
"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it
at last."
And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet.
Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the
bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.
"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."
"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the
squadron back."
The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire
without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in
the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted
the farther side of the river.
The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up
the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich
Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far
from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now
meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning
Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of
a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not
lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered
with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that
Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole
aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and
looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode
so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his
enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish
him- Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would
come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the
hand of reconciliation.
The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as
he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After
his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the
regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front
when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and
had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince
Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the
commander of the rear guard.
"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of
gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an
order to stop and fire the bridge."
"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.
"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious
tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the
hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"
Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the
colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout
Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely
carry his weight.
"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to
fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are
all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out."
The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to
Nesvitski.
"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said
nothing about firing it."
"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap
and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,
"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material
had been put in position?"
"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell
me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders
strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would
it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"
"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.
"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.
"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"
"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in
an offended tone.
"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be
quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."
The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the
stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.
"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce
that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would
still do the right thing.
Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to
blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second
squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to
the bridge.
"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He
wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his
face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.
Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression
appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,
the colonel, closely- to find in his face confirmation of his own
conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and
looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came
the word of command.
"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.
Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the
hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The
men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the
colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the
hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand
trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt
the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,
leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the
hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their
sabers clattering.
"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.
Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,
trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not
looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,
stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.
"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,
having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a
triumphant, cheerful face.
Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy
and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the
front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing
Rostov, shouted to him:
"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!
Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,
showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:
"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.
"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning
in his saddle.
Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were
standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small
group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,
and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and
then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side-
the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as
artillery.
"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they
get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within
grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each
man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily
asked himself with a sinking heart- watching the bridge and the
hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from
the other side with their bayonets and guns.
"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within
grapeshot range now."
"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the
suite.
"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have
done the job just as well."
"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the
hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!
How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the
Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,
the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.
Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."
"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."
He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being
detached and hurriedly removed.
On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke
appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at
the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two
reports one after another, and a third.
"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the
officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,
fallen!"
"Two, I think."
"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning
away.
The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue
uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but
at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the
bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening
there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had
succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now
firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were
trained and there was someone to fire at.
The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the
hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot
went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of
hussars and knocked three of them over.
Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on
the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he
had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the
bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like
the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard
a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar
nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to
him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men
seized the hussar and began lifting him.
"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but
still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.
Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something,
gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,
and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm,
and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what
soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer
still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery,
the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of
their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing
for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov.
"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness;
but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...
There- they are shouting again, and again are all running back
somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above
me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the
sun, this water, that gorge!..."
At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other
stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and
of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into
one feeling of sickening agitation.
"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect
me!" Rostov whispered.
The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their
voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from
sight.
"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just
above his ear.
"It's all over; but I am a coward- yes, a coward!" thought Rostov,
and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one
foot, from the orderly and began to mount.
"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.
"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks
and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the
dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting
at you like a target."
And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov,
composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from
the suite.
"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this
was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation
which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.
"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I
don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy."
"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel
triumphantly and gaily.
"And if he asks about the losses?"
"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars
wounded, and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy
smile, and pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing
distinctness.
BK2|CH9
CHAPTER IX
Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the
command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to
it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of
supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything
that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men
commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube,
stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions
only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its
heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and
Melk; but despite the courage and endurance- acknowledged even by
the enemy- with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of
these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had
escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated
from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and
exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought
of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared
in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to
Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the
sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a
junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without
losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.
On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the
left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with
the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the
thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left
bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were
taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,
after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a
fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.
Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of
their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number
of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube
with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the
enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems
converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all
the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over
Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the
whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors
were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some
victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the
frightened Bonaparte.
Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the
Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse
had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a
bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was
sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no
longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.
Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure
physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the
night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,
with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately
with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a
reward but an important step toward promotion.
The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow
that had fallen the previous day- the day of the battle. Reviewing his
impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself
the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the
send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow
officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise
enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a
long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears
seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of
victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running
away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself
with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so
but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled
all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the
battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night
was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the
sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road
were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.
At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.
The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the
front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each
of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were
being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he
heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely
wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,
at the envoy hurrying past them.
Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what
action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"
answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the
soldier three gold pieces.
"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.
"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers.
"There's plenty to do still."
"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a
conversation.
"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped
on.
It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the
paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings,
the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all
that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so
attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and
sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt
even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his
eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with
extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the
details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the
concise form concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to
the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that
might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be
at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace,
however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that
he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.
"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will
find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to
the Minister of War."
The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait,
and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and
bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along
a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The
adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any
attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.
Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he
approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and
without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into
one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind
instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to
despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder,
they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes
narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with
peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened
when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers
and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three
minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each
side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went
on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of
the door and the sound of footsteps.
"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the
papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.
Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army
interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he
was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger
that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,"
he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together,
arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual
and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the
firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently
deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial
smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man
who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.
"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good
news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high
time!"
He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it
with a mournful expression.
"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a
calamity! What a calamity!"
Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and
looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.
"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is
not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought
good news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the
victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I
thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the
parade. However, I will let you know."
The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,
reappeared.
"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to
see you," he added, bowing his head.
When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and
happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the
indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant.
The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle
seemed the memory of a remote event long past.
BK2|CH10
CHAPTER X
Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance
of his in the diplomatic service.
"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,"
said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the
prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was
ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh?
Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see."
After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's
luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin
settled down comfortably beside the fire.
After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived
of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life,
Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious
surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides
it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not
in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who
would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the
Austrians which was then particularly strong.
Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle
as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in
Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in
Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave
promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even
greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic
career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had
entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and
Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the
foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him.
He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they
have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak
French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it,
and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his
writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It
was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that
interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care,
but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or
report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services
were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in
dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.
Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be
made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to
say something striking and took part in a conversation only when
that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with
wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These
sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a
portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society
people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in
fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing
rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.
His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which
always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers
after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the
principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would
pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows
would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small,
deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.
"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.
Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,
described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.
"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of
skittles," said he in conclusion.
Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.
"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a
distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute
estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que
votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."*
*"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian
army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."
He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those
words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.
"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate
Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your
fingers! Where's the victory?"
"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without
boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."
"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"
"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the
smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at
their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in
the afternoon."
"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have
been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.
"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."
"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic
methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince
Andrew in the same tone.
"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to
take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but
still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only
the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and
King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor
secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of
my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to
the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..."
He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his
forehead.
"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I
confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties
here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack
loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl
give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at
last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility
of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear
the details."
"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar,
for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but
what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories?
Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one
archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only
over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and
we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on
purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke
Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its
defense- as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you
and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you
expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit
that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.
It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose
you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a
victory, what effect would that have on the general course of
events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"
"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"
"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count,
our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."
After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,
and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not
take in the full significance of the words he heard.
"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and
showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was
fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that
your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be
received as a savior."
"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince
Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before
Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the
fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the
bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard
reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.
"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is
defending us- doing it very badly, I think, but still he is
defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has
not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and
orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago
have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would
have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."
"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said
Prince Andrew.
"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they
daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,
it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that
will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin
quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,
and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting
between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If
Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will
be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the
preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."
"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,
clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what
luck the man has!"
"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to
indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he
repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down
laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!* I
shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"
*"We must let him off the u!"
"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the
campaign is over?"
"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is
not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the
first place because her provinces have been pillaged- they say the
Holy Russian army loots terribly- her army is destroyed, her capital
taken, and all this for the beaux yeux* of His Sardinian Majesty.
And therefore- this is between ourselves- I instinctively feel that we
are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France
and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."
*Fine eyes.
"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."
"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again
becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in
a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows,
he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far
away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery,
Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience
with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.
He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of
musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his
ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were
descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart
palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily
whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as
he had not done since childhood.
He woke up...
"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself
like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.
BK2|CH11
CHAPTER XI
Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first
thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be
presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,
the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's
conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full
parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into
Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.
In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With
Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy,
Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the
others.
The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay
society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which
Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.* This set, consisting almost
exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had
nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to
certain women, and to the official side of the service. These
gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they
did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,
they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then
the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.
*Ours.
"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a
fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his
appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.
Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."
"But the worst of it, gentlemen- I am giving Kuragin away to you- is
that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking
advantage of it!"
Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over
its arm. He began to laugh.
"Tell me about that!" he said.
"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.
"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,
"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the
Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing
among the women!"
"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"* announced Prince
Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.
*"Woman is man's companion."
Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's
face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom- he had to
admit- he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the
butt of this set.
"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski.
"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics- you should see his
gravity!"
He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began
talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered
round these two.
"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began
Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without
expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless
His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our
alliance...
"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him
by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than
nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the
nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."
And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite
finished.
"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden
mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with
satisfaction.
Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was
evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain
the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.
"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in
this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I
can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it
would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more
difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be
shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,
Hippolyte, of course the women."
"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"
kissing his finger tips.
"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane
interests," said Bilibin.
"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,
gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew
looking at his watch.
"Where to?"
"To the Emperor."
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come
back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."
"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the
way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said
Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.
"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I
can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.
"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for
giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do
it, as you will see."
BK2|CH12
CHAPTER XII
At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he
had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into
his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But
after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day
ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give
him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the
middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was
struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as
if not knowing what to say.
"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.
Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:
"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor
spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions-
the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not
interest him.
"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.
"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at
the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after
five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and
expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account,
which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the
Emperor smiled and interrupted him.
"How many miles?"
"From where to where, Your Majesty?"
"From Durrenstein to Krems."
"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."
"The French have abandoned the left bank?"
"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during
the night."
"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"
"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."
The Emperor interrupted him.
"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"
"At seven o'clock, I believe."
"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"
The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew
withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides.
Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's
adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and
offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and
congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which
the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited
him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did
not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts.
Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the
window, and began to talk to him.
Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was
joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was
awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army
received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend
the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.
Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls,
he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his
father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a
vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a
portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.
Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop
to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent
some time in the shop.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the
portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The
scoundrel is again at our heels!"
"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.
Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed
excitement.
"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This
affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without
striking a blow!"
Prince Andrew could not understand.
"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the
town knows?"
"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."
"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"
"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew
impatiently.
"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that
Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat
is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or
two."
"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was
mined?"
"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."
Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.
"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It
will be cut off," said he.
"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered
Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday,
those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,* Murat, Lannes,and Belliard,
mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)
'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined
and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its
head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up
the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign
the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and
take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the
bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of
the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."
*The marshalls.
"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news
grieved him and yet he was pleased.
As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless
situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead
it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift
him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to
fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching
the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be
the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be
entrusted with the executing of the plan.
"Stop this jesting," he said
"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder.
These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white
handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the
marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets
them enter the tete-de-pont.* They spin him a thousand gasconades,
saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a
meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,
and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace
the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French
battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary
material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length
appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von
Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of
the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's
hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince
Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed,
so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his
rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so
dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y
voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur
l'ennemi!"*[2] In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did
not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due
appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes
the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went
on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his
own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was
to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this
sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the
bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant,
who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and
says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat,
seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns
to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:
'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you
allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of
genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the
sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the
Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor
rascality...."
*Bridgehead.
*[2] That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought
to be firing at the enemy.
"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the
gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of
firing, and the glory that awaited him.
"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied
Bilibin."It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as
at Ulm... it is..."- he seemed to be trying to find the right
expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it
is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had
produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His
hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a
slight smile he began to examine his nails.
"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had
risen and was going toward his room.
"I am going away."
"Where to?"
"To the army."
"But you meant to stay another two days?"
"But now I am off at once."
And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went
to his room.
"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been
thinking about you. Why are you going?"
And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles
vanished from his face.
Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.
"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back
to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher,
it is heroism!"
"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.
"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the
other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the
contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no
longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return
and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and
go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to
Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel
comfortably in my caleche."
"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.
"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are
you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two
things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you
will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will
share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."
And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was
insoluble.
"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he
thought: "I am going to save the army."
"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.
BK2|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,
Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would
find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.
In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the
heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf
Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was
moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was
so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a
carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack
commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage
wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own
luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him
as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly
flight confirmed these rumors.
"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des
extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme
sort- (le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."* He remembered these words in
Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,
and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a
feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be
nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it
no worse than others."
*"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the
earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate- (the
fate of the army at Ulm)."
He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of
detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and
vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy
road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and
before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels,
the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the
crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of
soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road
fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and
broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for
something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,
crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from
them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent
or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of
shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud
pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,
traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers
directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their
voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their
faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this
disorder.
"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski,
recalling Bilibin's words.
Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up
to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse
vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available
materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,
and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in
shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.
Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier
when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the
woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating
the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get
ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of
the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew
she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from
under the woolen shawl, cried:
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect
me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh
Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost
our people..."
"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to
the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"
"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed
the doctor's wife.
"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince
Andrew riding up to the officer.
The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the
soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"
"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his
lips.
"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy
rage, "who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander
here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated
he. This expression evidently pleased him.
"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice
from behind.
Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,
tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his
championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him
to what he dreaded more than anything in the world- to ridicule; but
his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence
Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised
his riding whip.
"Kind...ly let- them- pass!"
The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.
"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's
this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."
Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the
doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a
sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he
galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in
chief was.
On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,
intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to
sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his
mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking
as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar
voice called him by name.
He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the
little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed
something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.
"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he
shouted.
Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant
having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he
had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.
This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing
countenance.
"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.
"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.
"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked
Nesvitski.
"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I
could do to get here."
"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,
we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and
have something to eat."
"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,
Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other
adjutant.
"Where are headquarters?"
"We are to spend the night in Znaim."
"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said
Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me- fit to cross the
Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's
the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,
noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.
"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.
He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife
and the convoy officer.
"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.
"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.
"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,
abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off
to the house where the commander in chief was.
Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his
suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince
Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the
house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the
Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little
Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk,
with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom
upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn- he too had evidently not
slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to
him.
"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to
the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."
"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing
angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.
Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and
dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the
sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him,
the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the
clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to
the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks
holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that
something important and disastrous was about to happen.
He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.
"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."
"What about capitulation?"
"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."
Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.
Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,
and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the
doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the
expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to
be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of
his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without
recognizing him.
"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.
"One moment, your excellency."
Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,
impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in
chief.
"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew
rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.
Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"
Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.
"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may
Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"
His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his
left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which
he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a
gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration
kissed him on the neck instead.
"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.
"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.
"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to
remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."
"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed,
he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"
They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.
"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old
man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's
mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,"
he added as if speaking to himself.
Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him
and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar
near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the
empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those
men's death," thought Bolkonski.
"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.
Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had
been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently
swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince
Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With
delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his
interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court
concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.
BK2|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the
army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported
that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing
in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the
troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at
Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut
him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty
thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If
Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops
arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown
parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior
forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with
Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems
to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked
being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the
Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having
to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as
strong, who would hem him in from two sides.
Kutuzov chose this latter course.
The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were
advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles
off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the
French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the
French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army
to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to
forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road
for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the
road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.
The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard,
four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the
Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march
without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and
if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as
long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road
to Znaim.
Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills,
with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as
stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road
at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching
Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to
march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration
with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain
for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn,
which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the
impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the
Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat
to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak
detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole
army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of
the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with
this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both
armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that
negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he
therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count
Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed
Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.
Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace
negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.
Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or
refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he
had received.
A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving
Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport
and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French)
advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the
only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On
receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General
Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp.
Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer
terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back
to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the
entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and
hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the
transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of
an enemy eight times as strong as itself.
Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which
were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to
pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered,
proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen
miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal
of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the
following letter to Murat:
Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,
at eight o'clock in the morning
To PRINCE MURAT,
I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command
only my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice
without my order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign.
Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him
that the general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,
and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.
If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I
will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the
Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and
artillery.
The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are
nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The
Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna
bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of
the Emperor.
NAPOLEON
Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to
Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all
the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim
escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,
dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first
time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was
in store for him.
BK2|CH15
CHAPTER XV
Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who
had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and
reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet
reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In
Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of
affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its
possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the
nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a
favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and
special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be
an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to
remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an
eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important."
"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said
Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.
"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a
medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he
wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a
brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying,
asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the
disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be
sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly
dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of
speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince
Andrew.
On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who
seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors,
benches, and fencing from the village.
"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff
officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in
hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and
sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.
I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a
moment."
"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,"
said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.
"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you
something."
They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed
and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.
"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the
reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than
once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The
prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,
Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer
who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to
dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not
altogether comfortably.
"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he
continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set
a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be
sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The
staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of
you, all!" he added in a tone of command.
Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery
officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged
foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,
kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.
"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain
Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently
wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt
that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.
"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to
preserve his gravity.
Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.
There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather
comic, but extremely attractive.
The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode
on.
Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking
soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left
some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which
showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt
sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host
of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown
up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer
rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it
they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by
others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses
and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned
atmosphere of these latrines.
"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"* said the staff
officer.
*"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."
They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could
already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the
position.
"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the
highest point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without
his boots. You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."
"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew,
wishing to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please
don't trouble yourself further."
The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.
The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly
and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had
been in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road
seven miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and
alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French
lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The
soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major
and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in
each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers
scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and
were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the
fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg
bands or mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and
porridge cookers. In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers
were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,
which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an
officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.
Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,
crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,
tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to
him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with
reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,
and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,
licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.
All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home
awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before
an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.
After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev
grenadiers- fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs- near
the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different
from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of
grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while
two others were flourishing their switches and striking him
regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout
major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams
kept repeating:
"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,
honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor
in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"
So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but
unnatural screams, continued.
"Go on, go on!" said the major.
A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his
face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the
adjutant as he rode by.
Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our
front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and
left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce
had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the
men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides
the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were
many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their
strange foreign enemies.
Since early morning- despite an injunction not to approach the
picket line- the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away.
The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a
curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the
sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew
halted to have a look at the French.
"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a
Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer
and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark
to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to
keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!"
"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was
considered an adept at French.
The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince
Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying.
Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was
stationed, with his captain.
"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and
trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible
to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"
Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot
dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about
the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the
Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and
had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the
Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.
"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you
off," said Dolokhov.
"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said
the French grenadier.
The French onlookers and listeners laughed.
"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"* said Dolokhov.
*"On vous fera danser."
"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"* asked a Frenchman.
*"What's he singing about?"
"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a
former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the
others..."
"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.
"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.
"The devil skin your Emperor."
And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and
shouldering his musket walked away.
"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.
"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,
Sidorov, you have a try!"
Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber
meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter,
Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.
"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy
and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the
French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed
to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and
all return home as quickly as possible.
But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and
entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon
confronted one another as before.
BK2|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left,
Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff
officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he
dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered
cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he
stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his
measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and
still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the
left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed
wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager
conversation.
It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and
the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just
facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon
Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the
French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of
whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To
the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a
battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye.
Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated
the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the
farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery
stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the
easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating
us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,
in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.
The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they
could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a
steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to
retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the
cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two
points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,
to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to
withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew,
being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass
movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical
accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of
events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only
important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he
said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must
hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that
case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If
they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high
ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat
to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been
beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly,
but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were
saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the
shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.
"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew,
a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what
is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."
Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't
escape it anyhow."
"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third
manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are
very wise, because you can take everything along with you- vodka and
snacks."
And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,
laughed.
"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the
familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is.
Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there
is no sky but only an atmosphere."
The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.
"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.
"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in
the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,
philosophizing voice with pleasure.
"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a
future life..."
He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air;
nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon
ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded
into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a
mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.
And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth
and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed
followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer
who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.
BK2|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,
looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes
ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto
motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a
battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two
mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A
small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,
probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had
not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a
report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and
galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the
cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our
guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the
parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.
Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern
letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at
once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the
Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the
Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.
"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood
rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"
Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and
drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same
rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets
ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that
filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but
enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer
seemed to say.
Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up,
he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming
toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and
riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped,
waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and
recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while
Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.
The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince
Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.
Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face
and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking
and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that
impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince
Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew
told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that
everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he
had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride,
spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental
accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that
there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the
direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the
suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the
prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff
officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian- an
accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of
curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around
him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange
appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet
coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle.
"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to
the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach
already."
"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather
cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of
Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really
was.
"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.
(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing
a prince, but could not get it quite right.)
By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a
ball struck the ground in front of them.
"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive
smile.
"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.
"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"
He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished
speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which
suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a
Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant,
crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent
over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant
stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive
curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.
Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing
the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to
say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with
the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged
his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber
of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story
of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the
recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had
reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined
the battlefield.
"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman
standing by the ammunition wagon.
He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you
frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him.
"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired,
freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.
"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he
rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.
As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and
his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they
could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly
back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number
One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while
Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's
mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over
the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the
general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.
"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a
feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to
his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"
Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his
cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military
salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though
Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing
incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just
opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.
No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but
after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had
great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set
fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the
officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole
battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on
our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was
stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring
rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the
right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to
Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the
horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two
battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank.
The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if
these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.
Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked
at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's
remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But
at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the
commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses
of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was
in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince
Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off
at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with
orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour
later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already
retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been
opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened
to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.
"Very good!" said Bagration.
As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also,
and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go
there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in
command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at
Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow
in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to
withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion
that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince
Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the
commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his
surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince
Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity,
by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not
by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.
Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to
chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the
tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who
approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and
officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and
were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.
BK2|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right
flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard
but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer
they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they
felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet
wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged
along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a
gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently
hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by
himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm
which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his
greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his
face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended
a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met
a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were
ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's
presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them
rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an
officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of
retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the
ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning
the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked
with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with
it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the
touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were
firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke
which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and
whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought
Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an
attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square- for they are
not drawn up for that."
The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a
pleasant smile- his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,
giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as
a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had
been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been
repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had
been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had
occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know
what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to
him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been
repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at
the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all
over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had
shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still
firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French
infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men.
Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what
he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to
bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had
just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on
Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the
concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who
on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The
dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of
profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him
eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although
his movements were still slow and measured.
The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating
him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.
"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing
for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him.
"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling,
singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone
of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who
has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister
your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and
his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words.
The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did
not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to
give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking,
the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising
wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible
hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it,
opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French
column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.
One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the
officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its
staff.
"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.
The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The
clash would take place on this side of it...
The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly
formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the
laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order.
Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of
men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to
Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a
stupid and happy expression- the same man who had rushed out of the
wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how
dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.
With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly
with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to
his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with
the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He
carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and
not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and
now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body
turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were
concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and
feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left...
left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in
time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers
burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of
these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each
alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a
bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen
behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,
panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,
flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the
column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the
company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a
semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old
trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside
the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a
hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the
regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear
left... left... left.
"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.
"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from
the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on
Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We
know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though
fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.
The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.
Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and
dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over
his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The
head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from
below the hill.
"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous
voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging
his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the
awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible
power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness.
The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside
Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets,
and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who,
with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with
difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently
continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after
another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their
uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among
them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and
complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,
Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"
"Hurrah- ah!- ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and
passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular
but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.
BK2|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right
flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed
to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French
advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was
spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the
center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was
hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed.
But our left- which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the
Pavlograd hussars- was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by
superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion.
Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank
with orders to retreat immediately.
Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse
about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his
courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it
was dangerous.
Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where
the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where
they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.
The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander
of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which
Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left
flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment
in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two
commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after
the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already
advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of
offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,
were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to
general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in
peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the
infantry collecting wood.
"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the
hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so
let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars...
Bugler, sount ze retreat!"
But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling
together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the
capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the
milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The
general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky
steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and
rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows
but with secret malevolence in their hearts.
"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my
men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to
occupy the position and prepare for an attack."
"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"
suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."
"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if
you are not aware of the fact..."
"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel,
touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so
goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't
vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!"
"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own
pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!"
Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the
general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front
line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the
bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and
they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the
line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that
it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken
ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The
general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another
like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to
detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination
successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give
occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave
the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time
testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard
the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the
wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It
was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry.
They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the
French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to
attack in order to cut away through for themselves.
The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to
mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns
bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and
again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear-
resembling the line separating the living from the dead- lay between
them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether
they would they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it,
agitated them all.
The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to
questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately
insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything
definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron.
The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were
drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left
flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not
himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself
to the men.
"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at
last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which
he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.
"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot
fo'ward!"
The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at
the reins and started of his own accord.
Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his
hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see
distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some
way off.
"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks
drooping as he broke into a gallop.
Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more
elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had
been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible- and now he
had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but
everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I
will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.
"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"
thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a
full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was
already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep
over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at
that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away
from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be
carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same
spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against
him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped
past.
"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov
asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle
of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw
nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around
him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the
horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back,
pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled
but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his
sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men
were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.
Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now
the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself
and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he
wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something
superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if
it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find
blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing
some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a
man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,
and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running
behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among
the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar.
He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.
"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will
take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing
his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching
Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get
at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful
that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they
running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom
everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him,
and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to
kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more
than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the
situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was
already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And
the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding
his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his
pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran
with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the
feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns
bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One
single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed
his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field
with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then
turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder
of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but
having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had
fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his
run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade
farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he.
"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left
arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He
could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov
closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled
past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his
left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were
some Russian sharpshooters.
BK2|CH20
CHAPTER XX
The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the
outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting
mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his
fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in
battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of
panic.
"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.
The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the
general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment,
and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service
who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters
for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the
recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and
above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for
self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring
his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell
around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what
was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he
had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years'
service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.
Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind
the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and
descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides
the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of
soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,
disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate
shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his
furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former
self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued
to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral
hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating
in a panic.
The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the
powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at
that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any
apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and
Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was
Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood
and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French
unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the
enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination
that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets
and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at
close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French
officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions
re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half
were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join
up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major
Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies
pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the
commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a
bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was
bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.
He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his
blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips
were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions
to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.
"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to
the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I
stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and
spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I
beg you will remember this, your excellency!"
"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major
Ekonomov.
But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around
his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.
"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your
excellency!"
Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of
the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the
center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew
also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When
the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the
middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued
firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could
not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing
from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action
of that battery led the French to suppose that here- in the center-
the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to
attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by
grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.
Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in
setting fire to Schon Grabern.
"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!
Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen,
brightening up.
All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the
direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the
soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"
The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French
columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as
though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the
right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.
In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in
successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed
this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our
guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a
munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were,
however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were
replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were
carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun
battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning
of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the
guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as
merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing
below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.
Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly
to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it,
ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the
French.
"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels
and working the screws himself.
Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always
made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from
gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders
about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones,
and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.
His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or
wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at
the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the
injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and,
as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders
taller and twice as broad as their officer- all looked at their
commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the
expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.
Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and
activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense
of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded
never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more
elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a
day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and
that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar
ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and
did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was
in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.
From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle
and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and
perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight
of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on
the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking
the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these
things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his
brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns
were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs
were blown by an invisible smoker.
"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a
small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left
by the wind.
"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."
"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing
close by, who heard him muttering.
"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.
"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"* was
the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which
was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their
guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard
Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at
him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every
movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now
diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He
listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.
*Daughter of Matthew.
"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.
He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was
throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.
"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was
saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice
called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"
Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had
turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping
voice:
"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."
"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his
superior.
"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.
"I..."
But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon
ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.
He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another
ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.
"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.
The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the
same order.
It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the
space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with
a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed
horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the
limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he
approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the
mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid,"
thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the
order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns
removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together
with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from
the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.
"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an
artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"
Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to
seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two
cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down
the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),
Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.
"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to
Tushin.
"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear
fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.
BK2|CH21
CHAPTER XXI
The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,
hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing
dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.
The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on
the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,
continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range
of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the
staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice
sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one
another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to
proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,
silently- fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep
without knowing why- rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the
orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves
after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty
infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's
wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"
carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one
hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.
"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For
God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"
It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift
and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.
"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"
"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on,
lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the
wounded officer?"
"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.
"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,
Antonov."
The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was
pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on
"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.
The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his
breeches and arm.
"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on
which Rostov sat.
"No, it's a sprain."
"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.
"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the
artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if
apologizing for the state of his gun.
It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by
the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they
halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the
uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly,
near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of
shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and
was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They
all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move,
and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances
as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking
eagerly, streamed out of a side street.
"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.
"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now,"
said another.
"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!
Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to
drink?"
The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and
again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded
by the humming infantry as by a frame.
In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was
flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and
the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and
voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other
sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the
army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one
with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became
agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite,
and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now?
Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides.
The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report
spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had
halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.
Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,
having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a
dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a
bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged
himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering
shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but
he kept awake kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which
he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and
then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red,
and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting
cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent
eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw
that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.
From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,
who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The
sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud,
the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous
rumble.
It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through
the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a
storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed
before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on
his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.
"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,
your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"
With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came
up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns
moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers
rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,
each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding
on to.
"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them
shouted hoarsely.
Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg
band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.
"Must one die like a dog?" said he.
Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier
ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.
"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,
fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire- we'll return it with
interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.
Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and
passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.
"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.
"He's dead- why carry him?" said another.
"Shut up!"
And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.
"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.
"Yes."
"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,"
said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.
"Coming, friend."
Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,
walked away from the fire.
Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared
for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some
commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old
man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton
bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,
flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with
the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and
Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering
eyes.
In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French,
and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture,
shaking his head in perplexity- perhaps because the banner really
interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was,
to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next
hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our
dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince
Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into
details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had
been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the
action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were
woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a
bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French
troops.
"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was
disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come
on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'- and
that's what I did."
The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not
managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.
Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid
all that confusion what did or did not happen?
"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-
remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last
interview with the gentleman-ranker- "that Private Dolokhov, who was
reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence
and particularly distinguished himself."
"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"
chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the
hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry
officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."
Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of
his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the
glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious
expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie
devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:
"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:
infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were
abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for
someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left
flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the
very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning
to the staff officer on duty.
"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I
can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had
only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added,
modestly.
Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the
village and had already been sent for.
"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince
Andrew.
"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff
officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.
"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly
and abruptly.
All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way
timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past
the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always
was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of
the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.
"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not
so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom
Zherkov laughed loudest.
Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his
guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive
present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so
excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The
officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before
Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to
mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your
excellency."
"You might have taken some from the covering troops."
Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that
was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into
trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who
has blundered looks at an examiner.
The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not
wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture
to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows
and his fingers twitched nervously.
"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt
voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I
went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two
guns smashed, and no supports at all."
Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at
Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.
"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he
continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that
battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"
and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.
Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show
distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to
credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince
Andrew went out with him.
"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.
Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He
felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had
hoped.
"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will
all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows
before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense.
Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his
eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of
loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers-
wounded and unwounded- it was they who were crushing, weighing down,
and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm
and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.
For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things
appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,
Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov
with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with
Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier
with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that
were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and
always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,
but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's
breadth. It would not ache- it would be well- if only they did not
pull it, but it was immpossible to get rid of them.
He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung
less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling
snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the
doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was
sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow
body.
"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or
pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He
sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.
"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his
shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt
and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today- frightful!"
Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes
fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,
bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his
healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why
did I come here?" he wondered.
Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant
of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.
BOOK THREE: 1805
CHAPTER I
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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."
"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."
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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.
Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of
attitude toward him that had taken place in society.
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.
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."
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.
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:
"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."
The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre,
looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's
voice, "I see you are all right there."
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.
A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna
said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"
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.
"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."
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.
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.
"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.
BK3|CH2
CHAPTER II
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.
"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."
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.
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?"
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.
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.
"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked
one of the ladies.
"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."
"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated
laughing.
"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...."
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!"
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.
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.
"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.
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.
BK3|CH3
CHAPTER III
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?
BK3|CH4
CHAPTER IV
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.
BK3|CH5
CHAPTER V
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.
BK3|CH6
CHAPTER VI
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.
BK3|CH7
CHAPTER VII
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.
BK3|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
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.
BK3|CH9
CHAPTER IX
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.
BK3|CH10
CHAPTER X
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.
Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.
"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to
make him go on.
"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.
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.
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.
"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.
"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared
to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"
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.
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.
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.
"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor
apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.
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!"
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!"
"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!"
"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.
And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and
no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.
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.
"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our
enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.
The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.
Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand
patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.
"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen
in love with the Tsar," he said.
"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a
lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..."
"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."
"No, you don't understand!"
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.
BK3|CH11
CHAPTER XI
The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his
physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and
among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was
unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around
him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong
impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and
wounded.
At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a
flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was
brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The
Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At
midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off
with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.
It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a
meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a
personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince
Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate
with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were
actuated by a real desire for peace.
Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar,
and remained alone with him for a long time.
On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced
two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange
of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the
nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted
till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of
Austerlitz was fought.
Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity- the eager talk, running
to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants- was confined to the
Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this
activity reached Kutiizov's headquarters and the staffs of the
commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to
all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth
to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from
their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started
in one enormous mass six miles long.
The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's
headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that
followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large
tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and
a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and
cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands
to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.
Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the
military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and
just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is
transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse
has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage
one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their
movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though
it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment
comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel
begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of
which are beyond its ken.
Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of
innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement
of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated
human activities of 160,000 Russians and French- all their passions,
desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride,
fear, and enthusiasm- was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz,
the so-called battle of the three Emperors- that is to say, a slow
movement of the hand on the dial of human history.
Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the
commander in chief.
At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters
and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand
marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.
Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the
coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and
dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were
dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters
everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something
others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.
"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was
sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your
old fellow? Out of sorts?"
"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be
heard."
"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when
he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when
Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."
"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is
Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"
"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a
general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this
general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with
Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that
interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat
is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is
afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"
"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.
"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him
'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!
That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov,
looking round at Bilibin with a smile.
"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should
be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a
chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in
our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule- not to put
yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe
me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than
all the experience of old Cunctators."
"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the
outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces
are situated," said Prince Andrew.
He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself
formed.
"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting
up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been
foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."
And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's
plan of a flanking movement.
Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which
might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage
that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew
began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his
own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed
absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.
"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you
can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.
"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.
"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who,
till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and
now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings
victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except
your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column!
The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le
Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally
Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."
"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are
now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a
third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."
"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew.
"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out
after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.
On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking
Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of
tomorrow's battle.
Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,
replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy
and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But,
my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after
military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"
BK3|CH12
CHAPTER XII
Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his
plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.
All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in
chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to
come, were all there at the appointed time.
Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his
eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the
dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of
chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt
himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become
unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a
heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not
know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what
this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening
to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the
Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his
headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and
now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's.
He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the
commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and
indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did
not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had
a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was
haughty and self-confident.
Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions
near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the
commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself,
Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking
tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last
Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not
attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this
and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to
be present at the council, he remained in the room.
"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said
Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on
which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.
Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged
over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low
chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms.
At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an
effort.
"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and
nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.
If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was
pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading
that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was
absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his
contempt for the dispositions or anything else- he was engaged in
satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was
asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a
moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was
asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to
read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading
which he also read out:
"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz
and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."
The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began
as follows:
"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right
extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,
while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his
right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially
if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can
both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between
Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of
Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this
object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The
second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on,
read Weyrother.
The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult
dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning
his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and
seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen.
Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed
upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy
Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands
on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent,
gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the
Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked
round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from
that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied
or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron
who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French
face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate
fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on
which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences,
he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and
with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips
interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian
general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as
if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to
look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an
expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking
an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless
gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.
"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud
enough to be heard.
Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his
hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in
attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an
assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map
conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar
locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had
not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother
complied and Dohkturov noted them down.
When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron
again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother
or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry
out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,
whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.
Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief
aim was to show General Weyrother- who had read his dispositions
with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-
that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him
something in military matters.
When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov
opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the
mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if
remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed
his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.
Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's
vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might
easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of
this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a
firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all
objections be they what they might.
"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.
"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.
"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the
smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the
treatment of a case.
"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,"
said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round
for support to Miloradovich who was near him.
But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything
rather than of what the generals were disputing about.
"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the
battlefield."
Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it
was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals
and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced
himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.
"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard
from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is
retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing
his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up
a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of
trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the
same."
"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting
an opportunity to express his doubts.
Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the
generals.
"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow- or rather for today,
for it is past midnight- cannot now be altered," said he. "You have
heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there
is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."
He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was
past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.
The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to
express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy
impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron,
and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were
right- he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to
state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account
of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and
my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"
"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he
thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of
most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he
remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he
remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her
pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously
emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was
billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.
The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed
mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow
everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more,
none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even
certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall
have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its
loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation
of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for
which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly
and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the
Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one
undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-
stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements- leads
his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.
"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,
however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his
triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him
alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he
does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is
removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.
"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,
well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I
don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but
if I want this- want glory, want to be known to men, want to be
loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing
but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never
tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame
and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family- I fear nothing.
And precious and dear as many persons are to me- father, sister, wife-
those dearest to me- yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would
give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of
love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these
men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's
courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up;
one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook
whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying,
"Tit, I say, Tit!"
"Well?" returned the old man.
"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.
"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter
of the orderlies and servants.
"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I
value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in
this mist!"
BK3|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in
front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the
line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master
the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with
our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind
him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,
peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray,
now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer
where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in
his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared- now
the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories- and he again
hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears
of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six
paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was
still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen,"
thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as
he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's
there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in
just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave
me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him
the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to
realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to
himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill
with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.
Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.
"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and
watchword- shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in
reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front,
this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now
before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back
I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the
saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars.
It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a
sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as
steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov
could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the
moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought
something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that
spot... a spot- une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a
tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be
surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha...
take my sabretache..."- "Keep to the right, your honor, there are
bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding
in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk
almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was
succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what
was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor?
No, that's not it- that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache...
saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches.
Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought
about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh,
but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief
thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to
say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But
that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important
thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes!
That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at
once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?
What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the
moment he opened his eyes his eyes he heard in front of him, where the
enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and
the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.
Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went
out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill
fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov
could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them.
The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!"
and "rrrr!"
"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar
beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"
The hussar did not reply.
"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a
reply.
"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.
"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.
"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's
dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.
Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,
pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting
grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army
of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and
farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no
longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy
army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!"
he now heard distinctly.
"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to
the hussar beside him.
The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The
sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars
was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of
hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.
"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.
Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode
with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the
line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov
with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the
lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,
reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the
generals were saying.
"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is
nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to
kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."
"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if
they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....
Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still
there?"
"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your
excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied
Rostov.
Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face
in the mist.
"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.
"Yes, sir."
Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other
hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the
direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and
pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and
dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration
called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov
pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on,
continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and
continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a
trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but
heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the
valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached
it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined
in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride
over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which
gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be
easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed
the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point
where the French pickets had been standing that evening.
"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him.
And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that
had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a
report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive
sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in
the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more
reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the
fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose
spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a
footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in
his soul. But no more shots came.
Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop
again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.
Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had
only lit fires to deceive us.
"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might
retreat and leave the pickets."
"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said
Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything
tomorrow."
"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was
in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at
the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his
ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.
"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."
"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"
"What is it?"
"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached
to the first squadron?"
"What's your name?"
"Count Rostov."
"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."
"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.
But Rostov did not reply.
"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"
"I will give the order."
"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the
Emperor," thought Rostov.
"Thank God!"
The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the
fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops
the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing
him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive
l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:
Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the
Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at
Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position
we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round
me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will
myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with
your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's
ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see
your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for
there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is
at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the
honor of our nation.
Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let
every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these
hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This
victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter
quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France
will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my
people, of you, and of myself.
NAPOLEON
BK3|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the
center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,
but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French
right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to
plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into
which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes
smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking
tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a
tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires
throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels,
tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away
with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the
Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an
Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's
quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires,
thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got
their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their
coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the
ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed
the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and
regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final
instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who
remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet
resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and
unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog,
to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were
going.
A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his
regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has
walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,
just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and
rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same
comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the
same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely
cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the
day of battle- heaven knows how and whence- a stern note of which
all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,
announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and
awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the
soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their
regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning
what is going on around them.
The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they
could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and
level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one
might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns
advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and
ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and
unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary,
the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,
other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier
felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many
more of our men were going too.
"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the
ranks.
"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last
night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A
regular Moscow!"
Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or
talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war,
were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not
exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried out the
orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do when going
into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for
about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to
halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder
spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated
is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very
surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as
water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any
allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this
consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as
it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the
stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had
been occasioned by the sausage eaters.
"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up
against the French?"
"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."
"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in
the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned
Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up
behind. And now here we stand hungry."
"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking
the way," said an officer.
"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!"
said another.
"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.
"The Eighteenth."
"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you
won't get there till evening."
"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are
doing!" said the officer and rode off.
Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.
"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a
soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them,
the scoundrels!"
"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't
got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.
And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to
turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the
Germans.
The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was
moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center
was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all
ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in
front of the infantry, who had to wait.
At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a
Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry
should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher
command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and
dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending
the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more
densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a
shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying
intervals- trata... tat- and then more and more regularly and rapidly,
and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.
Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having
stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their
commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading
through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front
or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the
enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders
from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in
those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this
way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which
had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov
was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.
Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;
on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of
what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we
supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea
of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.
It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a
sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where
Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above
him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a
huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.
The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff,
were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and
Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and
begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces
that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man
from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his
Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front
of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise
out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving
in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the
valley. Not a single muscle of his face- which in those days was still
thin- moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His
predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had
already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and
part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack
and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that
in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian
columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one
direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into
the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from
the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the
night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all
indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far
away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen
constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was
already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still
he did not begin the engagement.
Today was a great day for him- the anniversary of his coronation.
Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and
in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in
that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything
succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above
the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,
self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily
in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his
attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun
floating up out of the mist.
When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and
mist were aglow with dazzling light- as if he had only awaited this to
begin the action- he drew the glove from his shapely white hand,
made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to
begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in
different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of
the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which
were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the
valley to their left.
BK3|CH15
CHAPTER XV
At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth
column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of
Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down
into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and
gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to
lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen
he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number
forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of
suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a
man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly
convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of
Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it
would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to
him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own
strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was
forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew
considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as
might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.
To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen
forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight
would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"
thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,
standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of
me."
He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.
Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with
which I shall lead the army."
In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights
was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay
like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left
into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of
firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the
vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that
sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there
the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the
right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of
hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left
beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared
in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The
commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting
the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and
irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without
any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front.
"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the
village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you
understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile
through narrow village streets when we are marching against the
enemy?"
"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"
answered the general.
Kutuzov laughed bitterly.
"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!
Very fine!"
"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the
dispositions..."
"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you
that?... Kindly do as you are ordered."
"Yes, sir."
"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man
is as surly as a dog."
An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his
hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the
fourth column advanced into action.
Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to
fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's
malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that
what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not
answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.
"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed
the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."
Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.
"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What
are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still
not replying to the Austrian.
Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.
Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped
the third division and convinced himself that there really were no
sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of
the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to
throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were
other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six
miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a
barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the
commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew
galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting
heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily
with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the
butts of their muskets on the ground.
"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a
general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all
the left-flank columns had already descended.
"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst
of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.
Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of
regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole
extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person
they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the
regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he
rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the
road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen
in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full
gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a
bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode
a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites.
Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave
the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute.
His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on
the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an
affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander
unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.
This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy
face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and
vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than
on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time
abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty
and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the
same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance
of goodhearted innocent youth.
At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed
brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping
two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked
round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,
all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh,
only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had
stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced
young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about
him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his
white adjutants and asked some question- "Most likely he is asking
at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old
acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his
reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young
orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and
Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay
horses covered with embroidered cloths.
As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields
enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and
confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the
galloping advent of all these brilliant young men.
"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor
Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same
time at the Emperor Francis.
"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward
respectfully.
The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had
not quite heard.
"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that
Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word
"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."
The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his
rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as
if complaining of Kutuzov.
"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not are not on the
Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are
assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor
Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to
what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about
him and did not listen.
"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a
resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not
being heard, and again something in his face twitched- "That is just
why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on
the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly.
In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed
dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he
certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.
The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye
waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov,
with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence
lasted for about a minute.
"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting
his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning,
but submissive general.
He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander
of the column, gave him the order to advance.
The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod
and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.
As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,
without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous
tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners
front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing
salute reined in his horse before the Emperor.
"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.
"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,
sire,"* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among
the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.
*"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."
Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a
little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's
presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a
bold, brisk pace.
"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery
voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect
of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades
in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors,
that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first
village you've had to take," cried he.
"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.
The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had
carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the
field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot
and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the
Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing,
nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that
was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.
The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a
remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.
BK3|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind
the carabineers.
When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column
he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been
an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops
were marching along both.
The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly
visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down
below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had
stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who
was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask
him for a field glass.
"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the
distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"
The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass,
trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their
faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to
be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly
appeared just in front of us.
"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But
how is that?" said different voices.
With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not
more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a
dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons.
"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"
thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.
"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at
that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was
heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two
steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at
this as if at a command, everyone began to run.
Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where
five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would
it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible
not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to
lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp
what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face,
red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not
ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov
remained in the same place and without answering drew out a
handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced
his way to him.
"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling
of his lower jaw.
"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the
handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing
soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably
realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and
rode to the right.
A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.
The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by
them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why
are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and
fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.
Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of
men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward
a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the
crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on
the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was
still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some
Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor
backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself
from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four
remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.
"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,
pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to
punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment
and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.
The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing
at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his
leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding
the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on
the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing
without orders.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....
"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of
the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the
disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"
But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of
shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and
run to the standard.
"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.
"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and
hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.
Several soldiers fell.
"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the
heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole
battalion would follow him.
And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then
another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!"
and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag
that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he
was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,
dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw
our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having
abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French
infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning
the guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within
twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above
him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually
groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at
what was going on in front of him- at the battery. He now saw
clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry,
pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other.
He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the
faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they were
doing.
"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.
"Why doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why
doesn't the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the
Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...."
And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to
the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had
triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited
him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it
ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him
on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but
the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his
seeing what he had been looking at.
"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and
fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle
of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner
had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or
saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the
sky- the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with
gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and
solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew- "not as we ran,
shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with
frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do
those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did
not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it
at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite
sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not
exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..."
BK3|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the
battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's
demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility
from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to
inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance
between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the
messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found
the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not
be able to get back before evening.
Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his
suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and
hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.
"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in
chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.
"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov,
hurriedly interrupting Bagration.
On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few
hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,
with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and
generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem
possible, pleasant, and easy.
All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be
a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he
was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going
with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself.
The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart
was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his
horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the
line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but
were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by
Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation
for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the
sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder
and louder.
In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket
shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two
cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the
hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon
that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but
merged into a general roar.
He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one
another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling,
spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the
gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of
infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.
Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was
going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand
or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men
of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of
troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make
out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating
effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and
determination.
"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,
and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther
and farther into the region where the army was already in action.
"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought
Rostov.
After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part
of the line (the Guards) was already in action.
"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.
He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came
galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks
were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,
involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.
"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many
hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole
width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white
uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and
across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the
way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at
the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of
the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their
hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their
figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our
Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming
to meet them.
The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their
horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command:
"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to
full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack
on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go,
but still was not in time to avoid them.
The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned
angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably
collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his
Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to
these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to
flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The
heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its
ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in
violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck,
galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov
before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that
their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with
red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for
immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke
enveloped everything.
At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him,
disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after
them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of
the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was
horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome
men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had
galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were
left after the charge.
"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall
see the Emperor immediately! " thought Rostov and galloped on.
When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them
and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so
much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on
the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the
officers.
Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he
heard a voice calling him by name.
"Rostov!"
"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.
"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said
Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have
been under fire for the first time.
Rostov stopped.
"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"
"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing
talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the
Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before
them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the
cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in
the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov
without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.
"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.
"With a message to His Majesty."
"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His
Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high
shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in
his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale,
white uniformed Austrian officer.
"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the
Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.
"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager
as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his
bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at
the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family- the
von Bergs- have been knights!"
He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and
rode away.
Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to
avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the
Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round
the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.
Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind
our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be.
"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?
Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself
and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he
reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the
commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish
with the rest."
The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more
and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the
village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.
"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is
firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian
soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.
"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was
told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who
understood what was happening as little as he did.
"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.
"May the devil take them- the traitors!"
"Zum Henker diese Russen!"* muttered a German.
*"Hang these Russians!"
Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse,
screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing
died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had
been firing at one another.
"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any
moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a
handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it
can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"
The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head.
Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights
just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief,
he could not, did not wish to, believe that.
BK3|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the
village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer
were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He
urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but
the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on
which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all
sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and
some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the
dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries
stationed on the Pratzen Heights.
"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking
everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.
At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.
"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier,
laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.
Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the
horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to
question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a
carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and
that he was dangerously wounded.
"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."
"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of
derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've
seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat
in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black
horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the
Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone
except the Tsar!"
Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a
wounded officer passing by addressed him:
"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was
killed by a cannon ball- struck in the breast before our regiment."
"Not killed- wounded!" another officer corrected him.
"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.
"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name- well, never mind... there are not
many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders
are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,
and he walked on.
Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now
going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible
to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in
which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now
to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and
unwounded?
"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a
soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"
"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to
go? That way is nearer."
Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he
would be killed.
"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to
save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the
greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The
French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians- the
uninjured and slightly wounded- had left it long ago. All about the
field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to
fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept
together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing
screams and groans, sometimes feigned- or so it seemed to Rostov. He
put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and
he felt afraid- afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed
and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.
The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and
wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an
adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several
shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the
corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of
terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter.
"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this
field with the cannon aimed at me?"
In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from
the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less
disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry
fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the
battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the
Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was
wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false
rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had
really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified
Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the
battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told
Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village
to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but
merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles
and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a
kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing
the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to
Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov
fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse
with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a
little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.
Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and
deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes,
evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose
figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his
attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by
that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored
monarch.
"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!"
thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov
saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory.
The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the
charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was
happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded
were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and
even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had
ordered him to deliver.
But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter
the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help
or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and
he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he
had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know
how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him
why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.
"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of
his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant
or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to
him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere
sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the
Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.
Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for
the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,
generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked
him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his
actions had proved.
"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the
right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?
No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his
reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind
look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and
with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at
the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.
While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,
Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the
Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him
to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling
unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.
Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke
long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,
covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.
"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly
restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter
despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.
His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness
was the cause his grief.
He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the
sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the
Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"
thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where
he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.
Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers
he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the
vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked
Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and
behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked
cap and sheepskin coat.
"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.
"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.
"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"
"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed
in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.
Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points.
More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.
Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other
columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly
confused masses.
The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were
crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of
Augesd.
After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot
cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from
numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,
directed at our retreating forces.
In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept
up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops.
It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many
years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap
peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled
up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on
that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and
blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with
wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts- on that
narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and
between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now
crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying
and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed
themselves in the same way.
Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,
or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and
splashing with blood those near them.
Dolokhov- now an officer- wounded in the arm, and on foot, with
the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,
represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by
the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,
jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had
fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon
ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed
Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,
squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.
"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here
another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.
Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the
edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto
the slippery ice that covered the millpool.
"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked
under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It
bears!..."
The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it
would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon
even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to
the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at
the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to
address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd
that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general
fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or
thought of raising him.
"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go
on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the
general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were
shouting.
One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto
the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen
pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg
slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to
his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped
his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why
do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the
crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the
horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank.
The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass,
and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some
back, drowning one another.
Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop
onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd
that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.
BK3|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in
his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and
unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.
Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did
not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt
that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his
head.
"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw
today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering
either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all
till now. But where am I?"
He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices
speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same
lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher,
and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and
did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had
ridden up and stopped near him.
It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding
over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the
batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and
wounded left on the field.
"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian
grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened
nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.
"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your
Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were
firing at Augesd.
"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone
on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back
with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had
already been taken by the French as a trophy.)
"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.
Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was
Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he
heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not
only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at
once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to
death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He
knew it was Napoleon- his hero- but at that moment Napoleon seemed
to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was
passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the
clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who
might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only
glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they
would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so
beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so
differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound.
He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused
his own pity.
"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and
carry him to the dressing station."
Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who,
hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the
victory.
Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from
the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting
while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing
station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when
with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the
hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was
able to look about him and even speak.
The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a
French convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the
Emperor will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these
gentlemen prisoners."
"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,
that he is probably tired of them," said another officer.
"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor
Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian
officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.
Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg
society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of
the Horse Guards.
Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.
"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.
They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.
"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of
Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon.
"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.
"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.
"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward,"
said Repnin.
"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young
man beside you?"
Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.
After looking at him Napoleon smiled.
"He's very young to come to meddle with us."
"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a
failing voice.
"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"
Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the
Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to
attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on
the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young
man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.
"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"
Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few
words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed
straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that
moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so
mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory
appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he
had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.
Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the
stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,
suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into
Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of
greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and
the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one
alive could understand or explain.
The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to
one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to
and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their
wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and
galloped away.
His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.
The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the
little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck,
but seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now
hastened to return the holy image.
Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the
little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his
chest outside his uniform.
"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon
his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence,
"it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems
to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this
life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm
I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to
whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable,
incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot
even express in words- the Great All or Nothing-" said he to
himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary!
There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of
everything I understand, and the greatness of something
incomprehensible but all-important.
The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable
pain; his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his
father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt
the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little
Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief
subjects of his delirious fancies.
The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented
itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little
Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of
shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and
torments had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward
morning all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness
of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's
doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in
convalescence.
"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not
recover."
And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care
of the inhabitants of the district.
BOOK FOUR: 1806
CHAPTER I
Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave.
Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to
travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a
comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had
drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts
across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to
Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew
more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.
"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,
shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,
when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had
entered Moscow.
"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with
his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed
of the sleigh.
Denisov gave no answer.
"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has
his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And
here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you
hurry up? Now then!"
"Which house is it?" asked the driver.
"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's
our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!
We're almost there!"
Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.
"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are
in our house, aren't they?"
"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."
"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,
don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his
new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake
up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again
nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka- get
on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his
door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last
the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw
overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off,
the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out
before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold
and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no
one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping
for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to
run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar
staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the
countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as
ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.
Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was
so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat
plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the
opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly
changed to one of delighted amazement.
"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young
master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with
excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order
to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss
the young man's shoulder.
"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.
"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have
a look at you, your excellency."
"Is everything quite all right?"
"The Lord be thanked, yes!"
Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone
to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the
large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card
tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had
already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the
drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and
began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the
same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more
kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish
which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted,
talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not
there, he noticed that.
"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."
"Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he has
changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."
*Nicholas.
"And me, kiss me!"
"Dearest... and me!"
Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count
were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the
room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.
Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"
Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his
face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang
away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked
piercingly.
All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all
around were lips seeking a kiss.
Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,
looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she
longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at
this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not
taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave
her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for
someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard
at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.
Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made
since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her.
When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her
face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket.
Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there
and wiped his eyes at the sight.
"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to
the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.
"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing
and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here
is Denisov!"
The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of
Denisov.
"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,
springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This
escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled
and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.
Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs
all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.
The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every
moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every
movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully
adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places
nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him
his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.
Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first
moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed
insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.
Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers
slept till ten o'clock.
In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,
satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly
cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The
servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving,
and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell
of tobacco.
"Hallo, Gwiska- my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice.
"Wostov, get up!"
Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his
disheveled head from the hot pillow.
"Why, is it late?"
"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A
rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of
girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a
crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black
hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had
come to see whether they were getting up.
"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.
"Directly!"
Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer
room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder
brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see
men undressed, opened the bedroom door.
"Is this your saber?" he shouted.
The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the
blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door,
having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from
behind it.
"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.
"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,
addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.
Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing
gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just
getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was
twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon
and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and
were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking
her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began
talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give
replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not
interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he
said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was
amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her
joy which expressed itself by laughter.
"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.
Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that
childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he
left home now for the first time after eighteen months again
brightened his soul and his face.
"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you?
I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want
to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"
"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.
"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to
her- thou or you?"
"As may happen," said Rostov.
"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other
time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend.
Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"
She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her
long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is
covered even by a ball dress.
"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in
the fire and pressed it there!"
Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what
used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly
bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood
which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best
joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of
love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not
surprised at it.
"Well, and is that all?" he asked.
"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just
nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does
it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."
"Well, what then?"
"Well, she loves me and you like that."
Natasha suddenly flushed.
"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are
to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him
be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?"
asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that
what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.
Rostov became thoughtful.
"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so
charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness."
"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over.
We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say
that- if you consider yourself bound by your promise- it will seem
as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were
marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."
Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had
already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when
he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She
was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with
him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her
now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so
many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a
wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free."
"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later
on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!
"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.
"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about
him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."
"Dear me! Then what are you up now?"
"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have
you seen Duport?"
"No."
"Not seen Duport- the famous dancer? Well then, you won't
understand. That's what I'm up to."
Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran
back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply
together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.
"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself
on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry
anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."
Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom,
felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in.
"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.
"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"
Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell
him so when I see him!"
"Dear me!" said Rostov.
"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov
nice?" she asked.
"Yes, indeed!"
"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,
Denisov?"
"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."
"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"
"Very."
"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."
And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet
dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When
Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how
to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of
meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could
not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters,
was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave
with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-
Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender
kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by
Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked
him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom
and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her,
for that would be impossible.
"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were
silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet
like strangers."
Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like
most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not
only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who-
dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a
brilliant match- blushed like a girl.
Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with
pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as
he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the
ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.
BK4|CH2
CHAPTER II
On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was
welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their
darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and
polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of
hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.
The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough
that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,
acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the
latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the
latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,
passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself
to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be
at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His
despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money
from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly- he
now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.
Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and
wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in
action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected
racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a
lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led
the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field
Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate
terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced
His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But
still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him,
he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be
understood that he had not told all and that there was something in
his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with
his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the
Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."
During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army,
he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She
was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him,
but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do
that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears
to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many
other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he
said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such
girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to
think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides,
it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to
his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an
affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,
sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house- that was another
matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!
At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy
arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.
The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving
orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head
cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish
for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of
the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the
arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so
well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and
still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of
their own resources what might be needed for the success of the
fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders
with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could
they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner
costing several thousand rubles.
"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"
"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.
The count considered.
"We can't have less- yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said
he, bending down a finger.
"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.
"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was
forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he
clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,
Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum
who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to
set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must
be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred
pots here on Friday."
Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his
"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of
importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club
steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the
clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count,
handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made
sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.
"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile,
as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would
only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own
orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You
military men like that sort of thing."
"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less
before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with
a smile.
The old count pretended to be angry.
"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"
And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and
respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the
father and son.
"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said
he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"
"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good
dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their
business!
"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his
son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and
pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has
sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get
them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in
and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay- the
coachman Ipatka knows- and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who
danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and
bring him along to me."
"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked
Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."
At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the
businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never
left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon
the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became
confused and begged her to excuse his costume.
"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her
eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now
we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in
any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is
now on the staff."
The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself
one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with
him?" he asked.
Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was
depicted on her face.
"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what
we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing
when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul
as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to
give him what consolation I can."
"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.
Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.
"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper,
"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited
him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and
that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show
her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half
smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called
Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."
"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club- it will all
blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."
Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred
and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting
the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince
Bagration, to dinner.
On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow
had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to
victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not
believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so
strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were
distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the
news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and
the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The
men who set the tone in conversation- Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri
Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski- did not show
themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles,
and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others- Ilya Rostov
among them- remained for a while without any definite opinion on the
subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that
something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult,
and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury
comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion
reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely.
Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible
event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners
of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the
treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of
the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's
incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the
sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the
army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had
achieved miracles of valor.The soldiers, officers, and generals were
heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished
by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,
where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day
beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also
conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact
that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In
his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier
without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by
memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover,
paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing
disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.
"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent
him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.
Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,
calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.
All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on
modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting
consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and
the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to
battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to
show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but
that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all
sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of
heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a
standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five
cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know
him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the
left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those
who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a
pregnant wife with his eccentric father.
BK4|CH3
CHAPTER III
On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were
filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in
springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and
thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in
evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in
Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and
smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors'
every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present
were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat
fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and
members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual
groups. A minority of those present were casual guests- chiefly
young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov- who was
now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young
people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of
condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older
generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the
same remember that the future belongs to us."
Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his
wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,
went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull.
Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience
to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people,
he treated them with absent-minded contempt.
By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his
wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored
guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most
important old men were the center of groups which even strangers
approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The
largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and
Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been
overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through
them with bayonets.
Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from
Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.
In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the
Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply
to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing
close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently
failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of
crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the
wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was
improper to speak so of Kutuzov.
Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft
boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the
important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all
equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up
young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov
stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made
and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed
Dolokhov's hand.
"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been
together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili
Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man
who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a
general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a
frightened face: "He's arrived!"
Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and- like rye shaken
together in a shovel- the guests who had been scattered about in
different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by
the door of the ballroom.
Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or
sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the
hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded
whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of
the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian
and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.
Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and
whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There
was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with
his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression.
Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the
doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration
was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and
this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last
enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of
the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more
accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at
the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern- and he would have
found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and,
expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took
possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply,
surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first
impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and
guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration
over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count
Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy!
Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically
than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them
on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the
Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way
through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a
minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver
which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some
verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on
seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help.
But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in
their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and
looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it
to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he
would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner
with it) and drew his attention to the verses.
"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing
his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and
serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began
reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:
Bring glory then to Alexander's reign
And on the throne our Titus shield.
A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,
A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!
E'en fortunate Napoleon
Knows by experience, now, Bagration,
And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...
But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo
announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the
dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:
Conquest's joyful thunder waken,
Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...
and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading
his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was
more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the
rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between
two Alexanders- Bekleshev and Naryshkin- which was a significant
allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took
their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and
importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as
naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.
Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to
Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him,
disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and
Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to
his son.
Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov,
sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre,
beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of
the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of
Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.
His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and
the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till
the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions
to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety.
Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet
(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious
pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne
glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count
exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many
toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he
rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.
"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at
the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and
enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful
thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and
shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it
on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could
be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the
health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and
emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many
followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.
When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass
and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and
exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note
lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the
hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and
again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred
voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a
cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:
Russians! O'er all barriers on!
Courage conquest guarantees;
Have we not Bagration?
He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.
As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was
proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more
glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to
Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the
committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and
finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the
banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and,
covering his face, wept outright.
BK4|CH4
CHAPTER IV
Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate
and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed
that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all
through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed
eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge
of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and
hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by
some depressing and unsolved problem.
The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by
the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy
with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that
morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters
said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's
connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre
absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he
feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every
time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt
something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly
away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with
Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be
true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his
wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully
recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to
Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations
with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his
house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled
how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at
their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's
beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left
them for a day.
"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It
would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule
me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended
him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add
to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it
were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't,
believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in
his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and
dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel
without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That
expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes,
he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him.
It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must
please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him- and in fact I
am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible
and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were
now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking
merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the
other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he
glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and
massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov
looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his
hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a
word- an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation
and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not
responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,
Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.
"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy
of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's
health?"
Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting
till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.
"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise
engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"
"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.
"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.
"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.
Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were
talking about him. He reddened and turned away.
"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with
a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his
mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.
"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin- and their
lovers!" he added.
Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking
at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing
leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of
the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,
leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre
looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and
monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took
possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.
"How dare you take it?" he shouted.
Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski
and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.
"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened
voices.
Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that
smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"
"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.
Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,
pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him
the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's
request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to
be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements
for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home,
but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till
late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.
"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki,"said Dolokhov, as he took
leave of Rostov in the Club porch.
"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.
Dolokhov paused.
"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the
firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as
possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma
used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see
one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him
get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."*
*Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the
Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already
there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations
which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face
was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about
distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He
was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of
which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and
the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor
of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the
same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I
should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I
shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee.
Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed
through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to
him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way,
which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are
things ready?"
When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the
barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.
"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and
should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in
choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment
I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient
ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were
not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."
"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.
"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your
opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others
concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not
yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know,
Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let
matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.
Allow me to convey...."
"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the
same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and
where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of
the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand- a fact
that he did not to confess.
"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.
"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on
his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
the appointed place.
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine
forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up
during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at
the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces,
left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been
standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck
intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and
misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three
minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were
silent.
BK4|CH5
CHAPTER V
"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.
"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly
begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course
independently of men's will.
Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies
have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols,
and at the word thwee begin to advance.
"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and
nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the
mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached
the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol,
looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his
antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.
"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three,"
he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into
the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,
apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held
carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it
and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed
off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then
quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre
shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations,
stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him
from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as
he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his
figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his
left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face
was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.
"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not
over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he
wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning
face was pallid and quivered.
"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.
"Please," he uttered with an effort.
Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov
and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov
cried:
"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to
the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He
sucked and sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but
his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as
he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.
"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski
closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and
Dolokhov's angry cry.
"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on
the snow.
Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.
Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.
Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not
answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering
Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort,
took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was
struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender
expression on Dolokhov's face.
"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.
"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping
voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have
killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."
"Who?" asked Rostov.
"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and
Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that
he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not
survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.
Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most
affectionate of sons and brothers.
BK4|CH6
CHAPTER VI
Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg
and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after
the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained
in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not
fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace
the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early
days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,
passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her
Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen
it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and
suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.
"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,
yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
to do it?"- "Because you married her," answered an inner voice.
"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without
loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled
that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words
he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from
that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not
so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection
of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into
his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his
head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and
at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing
respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.
"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic
beauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in which
she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and
beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did
not understand her. How often when considering her character I have
told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not
understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of
all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible
truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible
word to myself all has become clear.
"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss
her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself
be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she
replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous:
'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked
her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed
contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children,
and that she was not going to have any children by me."
Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and
the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though
she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.
"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous
promener,"* she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with
young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not
love her.
*"You clear out of this."
"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a
depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And
now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and
perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"
Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of
what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their
troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.
"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?
Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'* to her,
which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must
endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's
nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor- that's all
apart from myself.
*I love you.
"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and
a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view
they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a
martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a
despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-
live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is
it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in
comparison with eternity?"
But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such
reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments
when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he
felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move
about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell
her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he
had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable
alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to
laugh at himself.
In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to
Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He
resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his
intention to part from her forever.
Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee,
Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.
He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled
expression, unable to realize where he was.
"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at
home," said the valet.
But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the
countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with
silver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round
her lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic,
except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent
marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in
front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak about
it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and
left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and
like a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears and
continues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried to
continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible,
he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at
him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.
"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should
like to know?" she asked sternly.
"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.
"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel
about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."
Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,
but could not reply.
"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe
everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that
Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness
of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and
you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel
prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew
that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of
all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing
what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without
cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A
man who's a better man than you in every way..."
"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her,
and not moving a muscle.
"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like
his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should
prefer yours."
"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.
"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you
plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who
would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,"
said she.
Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose
strange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He
was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on his
chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to
put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too
terrible.
"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.
"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said
Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"
Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.
"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table
with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her
brandishing the slab.
Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His
father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and
delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down
on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a
terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows
what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the
room.
A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his
estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property,
and left for Petersburg alone.
BK4|CH7
CHAPTER VII
Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz
and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite
of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his
body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What
was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a
possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the
people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or
dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The
gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at
Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after
brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made
their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this
official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the
gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from
Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.
"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his
hand and at the head of a regiment- he fell as a hero, worthy of his
father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the
whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort
myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise
he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field
of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."
After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone
in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next
morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the
architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.
When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at
his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.
"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,
throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own
impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that
wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)
She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.
Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad,
not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging
over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the
worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and
incomprehensible- the death of one she loved.
"Father! Andrew!"- said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such
an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her
father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.
"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed!
Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to
drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!"
The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but
on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in
her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy- a supreme joy apart
from the joys and sorrows of this world- overflowed the great grief
within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took
his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy
neck.
"Father" she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."
"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face
away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why?
Go, go and tell Lise."
The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father
and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he
took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw
him tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did
he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There
in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.
"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.
"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and
Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell
Lise. I will follow."
When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat
working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy
calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did
not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at
something joyful and mysterious taking place within her.
"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying
back, "give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and
held it below her waist.
Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained
lifted in childlike happiness.
Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of
her sister-in-law's dress.
"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,
Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with
bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.
Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.
"What is the matter, Mary?"
"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping
away her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.
Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began
trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry.
Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of
which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but
looked about uneasily as if in search of something. Before dinner
the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room with
a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again without
saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a
while with that expression of attention to something within her that
is only seen in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry.
"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.
"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I
feel afraid."
"So there's nothing?"
"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant
eyes at her sister-in-law.
She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to
hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which
was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince
each bore and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would
not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had
been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for
traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended
to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that
his son had been killed. He tried not to change his former way of
life, but his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept
less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for
her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return.
BK4|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning
of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,
but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word,
and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had
come, so now the smile of the little princess- influenced by the
general mood though without knowing its cause- was such as to remind
one still more of the general sorrow.
"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique*- as Foka the cook
calls it- has disagreed with me."
*Fruhstuck: breakfast.
"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are
very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,
ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.
"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said
one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife
from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last
fortnight.)
"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go.
Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.
"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on
the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of
inevitable pain showed itself.
"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,
Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a
suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some
affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary
Bogdanovna.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.
The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,
plump white hands with an air of calm importance.
"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary
looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.
"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not
hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything
about it."
"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the
princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they
had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at
any moment.)
"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna.
"We'll manage very well without a doctor."
Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy
being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the
large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On
their faces was a quiet and solemn look.
Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the
house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and
watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with
quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and
turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the
door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her
prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and
distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.
Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,
who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden
it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.
"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and
here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his
saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.
"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"
"God is merciful, birdie."
The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by
the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began
reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one
another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging.
Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that
Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the
superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman
in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one
spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good
manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a
softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and
mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.
There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'
hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'
quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old
prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent
Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.- "Say only that 'the prince
told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."
"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna,
giving the messenger a significant look.
Tikhon went and told the prince.
"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon
did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.
After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and,
seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his
perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed
him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles
or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world
continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of
suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable
did not lessen but increased. No one slept.
It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume
its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A
relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German
doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback
with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the
country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.
Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her
luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of
which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from
under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.
Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely
hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds
of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess
Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead
of a midwife.
"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.
Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the
window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of
the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the
larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the
damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill,
snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the
stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to
catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her
kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.
"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue! " she
said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most
likely the doctor."
"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet
him, he does not know Russian."
Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the
newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the
window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went
out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which
guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman,
stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond
the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in
thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary
was saying something.
"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"
"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who
was downstairs.
Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in
the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more
rapidly.
"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be
too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the
face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of
which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman
stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed
and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up
the stairs and embraced his sister.
"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a
reply- which he would not have received, for the princess was unable
to speak- he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the
doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last
post station), and again embraced his sister.
"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak
and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.
BK4|CH9
CHAPTER IX
The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on
her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair
lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy
mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince
Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on
which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear
and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I
love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so?
Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not
realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince
Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.
"My darling!" he said- a word he had never used to her before.
"God is merciful...."
She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.
"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!"
said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not
realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her
sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary
Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.
The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess
Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk
broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.
"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.
Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room
next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and
became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with
his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless,
animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to
the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.
"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.
He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more
seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek- it could not be
hers, she could not scream like that- came from the bedroom. Prince
Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of
an infant.
"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in
the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or
is the baby born?"
Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail;
tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began
to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his
shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling
jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor
gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman
rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the
threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the
same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite
the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was
on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny
black hair.
"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have
you done to me?"- said her charming, pathetic, dead face.
In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and
squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.
Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his
father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing
close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed
like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob
like a child.
Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew
went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the
farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though
with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to
say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and
that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He
could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little
hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and
to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me,
and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.
Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas
Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her
while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red
and wrinkled soles and palms.
His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of
dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and
handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat
in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in
the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up
joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded
approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not
sunk in the font but had floated.
BK4|CH10
CHAPTER X
Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the
efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks
as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of
Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of
the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.
Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during
his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him
passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond
of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about
her son.
"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for
our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like
a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it
honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him
and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg
when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it
together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to
bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go
through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail
to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the
fatherland out there as he. And now- this duel! Have these people no
feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and
shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for?
Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I
see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for
months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting
because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you
understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond
of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly
soul!"
Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way
no one would have expected of him.
"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't
care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love
so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle
if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two
or three friends- you among them- and as for the rest I only care
about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them
are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I
have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any
women- countesses or cooks- who were not venal. I have not yet met
that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a
one I'd give my life for her! But those!... and he made a gesture of
contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because
I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate,
purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it."
"Oh, yes, I quite understand, "answered Rostov, who was under his
new friend's influence.
In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter
Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the
winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of
the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas
brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl
of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening
flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly
amusing, now girlishly enchanting.
At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous
atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very
charming girls. Every young man who came to the house- seeing those
impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own
happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the
fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly
prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope-
experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the
Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of
happiness.
Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was
Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She
almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he
was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right
and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and
unnatural.
"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute
self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov
though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do
understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything
is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."
"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that
even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov- "you must understand
what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his
mother. What a heart!"
"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And
do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"
"What nonsense..."
"I'm certain of it; you'll see."
Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care
for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the
question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon
settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never
have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time
Dolokhov appeared.
Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance
at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people
which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya
and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his
glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha
blushed when they saw his looks.
It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the
irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.
Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but
he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.
"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and
Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as
before and was less frequently at home.
In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war
with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders
were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the
regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the
militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow
nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the
whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that
Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the
termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him
to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his
amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the
greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and
balls.
BK4|CH11
CHAPTER XI
On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing
he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he
and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany.
About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.
Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous
atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at
this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!
That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the
one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.
Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without
visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been
invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he
noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also
noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,
Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a
lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have
happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly
sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both
at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls
that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the
holidays.
"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He
asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also going."
*Denisov.
"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who
at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight.
"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale."
"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the
Arkharovs; they have a party."
"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the
question he noticed that it should not have been put.
"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya,
and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given
Pierre at the Club dinner.
"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further
confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left
immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the
matter.
"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I
told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He
has proposed to Sonya!"
Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late,
something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a
suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless,
orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society
it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore
Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with
Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget
her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to
say it Natasha began again.
"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a
pause, "she told him she loved another."
"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.
"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change
once she has said..."
"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.
"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas- don't be angry- but I
know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know
for certain that you won't marry her."
"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to
her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.
"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."
And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.
A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared
look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the
first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their
love.
"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more
boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and
advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."
Sonya interrupted him.
"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.
"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."
Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.
"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.
"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to
say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole
truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."
"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.
"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love
again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,
confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does
not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider
Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with
difficulty.
"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and
always shall, and I want nothing more."
"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of
misleading you."
And Nicholas again kissed her hand.
BK4|CH12
CHAPTER XII
Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers
as they watched their young people executing their newly learned
steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced
till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and
women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found
them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these
balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and
were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What
distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess
and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a
feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he
collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that
only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of
thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first
time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be,
pretty- so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.
Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was
exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but
at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka,
which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a
ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a
great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls
were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.
That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her
explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so
that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was
transparently radiant with impulsive joy.
Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real
ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with
pink ribbons.
Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She
was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever
person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.
"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.
Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly
patronage at the dancers.
"How sweet she is- she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.
"Who?"
"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.
"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.
"Who are you talking about?"
"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.
Rostov smiled.
"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils- you must dance,"
said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young
ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a
former pupil of his.
"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you
wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"
"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only
inattentive, but you had talent- oh yes, you had talent!"
The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not
refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old
ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot,
told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the
young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best
pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with
his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with
Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps.
Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber
in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was
because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of
a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:
"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish
mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly."
Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the
masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to
Natasha:
"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.
When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,
tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran
timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was
looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing
though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.
"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"
"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.
"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.
"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.
"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.
"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he
unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his
partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,
waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was
Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow
he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked
sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly
stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew
round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on
one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs
was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and
spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a
second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round,
and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a
circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to
him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round,
holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling
on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed
so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through
the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he
suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When
at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair,
he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not
even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,
smiling as if she did not recognize him.
"What does this mean?" she brought out.
Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,
everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and
again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about
Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and
mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not
leave her for the rest of the evening.
BK4|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at
Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:
As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know
of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell
supper tonight to my friends- come to the English Hotel.
About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the
theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once
shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening.
Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat
between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper
money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since
his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought
of how they would meet.
Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the
door, as though he had long expected him.
"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll
just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."
"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.
Dolokhov made no reply.
"You may punt," he said.
Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once
had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov
had then said.
"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if
guessing Rostov's thought.
Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the
Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he
had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually
cruel, action.
Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke
with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought
of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and
deliberately so that everyone could hear:
"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who
trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."
"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.
"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new
pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"
Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his
side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.
"Why don't you play?" he asked.
And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up
a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.
"I have no money with me," he said.
"I'll trust you."
Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and
again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's
running.
"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please
place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."
One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.
"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I
ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't
stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.
The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.
All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles
scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while
the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to
his usual stake of twenty rubles.
"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking
at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others
but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.
Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a
seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the
floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the
seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written
"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm
champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with
a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's
hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing
on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had
given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked
speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all
he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical
this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough
for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more
till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that
money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of
sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.
With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now
then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and
drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will
certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,
jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with
his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the
Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm
that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,
long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the
seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him
of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and
plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could
not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's
hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from
under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a
pipe that were handed him.
"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as
if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in
his chair, and began deliberately with a smile:
"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow
that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."
"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.
"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the
cards with a smile.
"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The
seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He
had lost more than he could pay.
"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at
Rostov as he continued to deal.
BK4|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
An hour and a half later most of the players were but little
interested in their own play.
The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen
hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,
which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he
vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it
already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer
listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of
Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against
him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three
thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the
sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both
hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with
spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did
not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy
wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he
loved and hated, held him in their power.
"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's
impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or
quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov
pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to
accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him,
and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at
the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came
first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him,
now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and
tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round
for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of
Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.
"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my
ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his
fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault
either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I
killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a
terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago
I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to
buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so
happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I
was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things
begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place
at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned
agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened?
I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No,
it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!"
He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not
hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its
helpless efforts to seem calm.
The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three
thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of
which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his
score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside
and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the
chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.
"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"
Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold
outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas
understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:
"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it
were the fun of the game which interested him most.
"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-
that's all that's left me! " And at the same time he said in a
cheerful voice:
"Come now, just this one more little card!"
"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All
right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure
twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three
thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov
submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six
thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.
"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether
you will let me win this ten, or beat it."
Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that
moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy
wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.
"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching
himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so
long," he added.
"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.
Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for
him to jest.
"When am I to receive the money, Count?"
Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.
"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.
"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas
straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at
cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."
"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,"
thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father
and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be
to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him
from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a
cat does with a mouse.
"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted
him.
"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to
mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.
"Then when am I to have it?"
"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.
BK4|CH15
CHAPTER XV
To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,
but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,
confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word
of honor, was terrible.
At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after
returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round
the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that
poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that
winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed
to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a
thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had
worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing
by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with
Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return
of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old
gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and
ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short
fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with
his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"
which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with gazing with his
sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.
"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse, she
said, without noticing Nicholas.
"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,
glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother
with the old lady.
"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.
"Is Papa at home?" he asked.
"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We
are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my
sake! Did you know?"
"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.
"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old
countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently
at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the
dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to
persuade Natasha to sing.
"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making
excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla- I entweat you!"
The countess glanced at her silent son.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the
same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"
"I expect so."
"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!
Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing
room where the clavichord stood.
Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to
Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.
Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's
nothing to be happy about!" thought he.
Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.
"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my
brain is the only thing left me- not singing! " his thoughts ran on.
"Go away? But where to? It's one- let them sing!"
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the
girls and avoiding their eyes.
"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to
ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,
had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed
it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from
sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself
as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my
enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to
herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as
I am."
"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,
where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as
ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her
toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with
which Denisov followed her.
"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his
sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"
Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her
eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her
surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may
produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which
leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill
you and make you weep.
Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing
seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She
no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that
comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;
but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her
said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be
trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had
finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect
breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs
said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In
her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her
own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled
with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that
voice could be altered without spoiling it.
"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely
opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And
suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the
next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided
into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,
two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...
One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this
misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor- it's all
nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!
Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank
God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si
he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did
I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was
finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from
everything else in the world and above everything in the world.
"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All
nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."
BK4|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he
did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than
reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and
went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old
count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing
him drive up, went to meet him.
"Well- had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and
proudly at his son.
Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into
sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's
condition.
"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and
last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him
feel ashamed feel of himself, he said, as if merely asking his
father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:
"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting.
I need some money."
"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I
told you it would not be enough. How much?"
"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless
smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a
little, I mean a good deal, a great deal- forty three thousand."
"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening
with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.
"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.
"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking
helplessly on the sofa.
"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a
bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as
a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his
crime. He longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his
forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it
happens to everyone!
The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and
began bustlingly searching for something.
"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to
raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"
And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of
the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at
all expected this.
"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And
seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into
tears.
While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and
daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to
her mother, quite excited.
"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."
"Made what?"
"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.
The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To
whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing
with dolls and who was still having lessons.
"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.
"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha
indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it
'nonsense!'"
The countess shrugged her shoulders.
"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell
him he is a fool, that's all!"
"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.
"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well,
if you are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of
annoyance. "Good luck to you!"
"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with
him."
"Well then, tell him so."
"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"
"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?"
said the countess smiling.
"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very
well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have
seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out
accidently."
"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."
"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."
"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"
answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.
"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say
it."
"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,"
said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this
little Natasha as grown up.
"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen
at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing
hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord
with his face in his hands.
He jumped up at the sound of her light step.
"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my
fate. It is in your hands."
"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so
nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall
always love you."
Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did
not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this
instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She
came up to them.
"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an
embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov- "but my
daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you
would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would
not have obliged me to give this refusal."
"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He
tried to say more, but faltered.
Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She
began to sob aloud.
"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,
"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I
would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and
seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing
her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without
looking at Natasha.
Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day
in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell
entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no
recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three
stages of his journey.
After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,
without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could
not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.
Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she
wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her
love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of
her.
He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at
last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and
received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking
leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which
was already in Poland.
BOOK FIVE: 1806 - 07
CHAPTER I
After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the
Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster
would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,
he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big
feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.
"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and
tea?" asked his valet.
Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had
begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same
question- one so important that he took no notice of what went on
around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to
Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at
this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it
was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours
or for the rest of his life.
The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling
Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without
changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his
spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could
go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed
him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day
he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first
agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,
they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,
he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve
and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the
chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the
screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the
same place.
The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his
excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let
his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying
and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.
"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad
for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he
needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a
thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.
But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as
possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I
considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they
considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who
executed him- also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What
should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am
I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?"
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and
that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer
was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease
asking." But dying was also dreadful.
The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering
her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of
rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered
cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want
the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to
happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me
less a prey to evil and death?- death which ends all and must come
today or tomorrow- at any rate, in an instant as compared with
eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,
and again it turned uselessly in the same place.
His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters,
by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous
struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her
seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put
into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife- as she
once was- did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has
been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself.
"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of
human wisdom."
Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and
repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre
found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.
"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this
gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another
traveler, also detained for lack of horses.
The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old
man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite
grayish color.
Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a
bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the
newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off
his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With
a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,
nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,
leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped
hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating
expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to
the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a
question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His
shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them
Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a
death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as
it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant
was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,
evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never
grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen
and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything
was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled
a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to
whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the
need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with
this stranger.
The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,* with an
unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be
wanted.
*To indicate he did not want more tea.
"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.
The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional
work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him.
All at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and
again, leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his
former position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not
time to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady
and severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.
Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright
old eyes attracted him irresistibly.
BK5|CH2
CHAPTER II
"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not
mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.
Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.
"I have heard of you, my dear sir, "continued the stranger, "and
of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to
say- "Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what
happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."- "I regret it very
much, my dear sir."
Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed,
bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.
"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but
for greater reasons."
He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa
by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt
reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but,
submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.
"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are
young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my
power."
"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful
to you. Where are you traveling from?"
The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but
in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were
irresistibly attractive to Pierre.
"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said
the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an
unexpected and tenderly paternal way.
"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your
acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's
hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull- a Masonic
sign.
"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"
"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the
stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in
their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."
"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the
confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his
own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs- "I am afraid I am very
far from understanding- how am I to put it?- I am afraid my way of
looking at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not
understand one another."
"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you
mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,
is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit
of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if
I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of
life is a regrettable delusion."
"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint
smile.
"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the
Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision
and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying
stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of
generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that
temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great
God," he added, and closed his eyes.
"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,
said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to
speak the whole truth.
The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with
millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he,
poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.
"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot
know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."
"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"
"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You
do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He is
in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just
uttered!" pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.
He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.
"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be
speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking?
Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity
and authority in his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist?
Whence came thy conception of the existence of such an
incomprehensible Being? didst thou, and why did the whole world,
conceive the idea of the existence of such an incomprehensible
Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and infinite in all His
attributes?..."
He stopped and remained silent for a long time.
Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.
"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,
looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the
leaves of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could
not keep still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I
could bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to
thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence,
His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts
his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may not see or
understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art
thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter
those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful
smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little
child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares
to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in
the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our
forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge
and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in our lack of
understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...."
Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face
with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but
believing with his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he
accepted the wise reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or
believed as a child believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction
and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker's voice- which sometimes
almost broke- or those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this
conviction, or the calm firmness and certainty of his vocation,
which radiated from his whole being (and which struck Pierre
especially by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)- at
any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did
believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and
return to life.
"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the
Mason.
"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts
reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness,
in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.
"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man
cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak."
The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.
"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish
to imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure
vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of
myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."
"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.
"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those
worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into
which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.
The highest wisdom has but one science- the science of the whole-
the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To
receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner
self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to
perfect one's self. And to attain this end, we have the light called
conscience that God has implanted in our souls."
"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask
thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained
relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich,
you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all
these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"
"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.
"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art
purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How
have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving
everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have
become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you
done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of
thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally?
No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is
what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of
service to your neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness.
Then you married, my dear sir- took on yourself responsibility for the
guidance of a young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped
her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an
abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and
you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing
strange in that, my dear sir!"
After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse,
again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes.
Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face
and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a
vile, idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.
The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called
his servant.
"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.
"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will
you not rest here?"
"No, tell them to harness."
"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me
all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with
downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at
the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a
contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not
want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he
wished to, could disclose it to me."
Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The
traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began
fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and
said in a tone of indifferent politeness:
"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"
"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,
hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do
not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what
you would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it
is I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me,
and perhaps I may..."
Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.
The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.
"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as
our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to
Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook
and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).
"Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,
first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and
do not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good
journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had
entered... "and success."
The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the
postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons
and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he
had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and
down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous
sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful,
irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It
seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow
forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former
doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility
of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one
another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented
itself to him.
BK5|CH3
CHAPTER III
On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his
arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a
Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing
he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto
unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining
perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men,
which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival,
the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in
Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and
ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him,
and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that
there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.
"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said
without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our
Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order
before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I
consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish
to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"
The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always
before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most
brilliant women, surprised Pierre.
"Yes, I do wish it," said he.
Willarski bowed his head.
"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all
sincerity- not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you
renounced your former convictions- do you believe in God?"
Pierre considered.
"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.
"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.
"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.
"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your
service."
Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries
as to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied
that brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had
only to tell the truth.
Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had
its headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a
small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the
aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in
strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him,
said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to
a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never
seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski
bound Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching
some hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed
him, and taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the
knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a
shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a
puckered, though smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain,
timid steps.
Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.
"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully
if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded
affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover
your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,
pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.
Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he
shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to
take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his
eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs
almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He
experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of
what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He
felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be
revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had
come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on
the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he
met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took
the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black
darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre
went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which
lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with
the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After
reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a
large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones
inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on
an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected
everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A
skull, a coffin, the Gospel- it seemed to him that he had expected all
this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.
"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,
associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened
and someone came in.
By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed,
he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the
darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the
table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.
This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his
chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which
rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit
up from below.
"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in
Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have
you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not
seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,
enlightenment?"
At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre
felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his
boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially
a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.
With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by
which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the
Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor
a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the
newcomer was an acquaintance- he wished him simply a brother and a
virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so
that the Rhetor had to repeat his question.
"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with
difficulty.
"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any
idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach
your aim?" said he quietly and quickly.
"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,
with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his
excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in
Russian.
"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"
"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men
who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the
inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he
spoke. "I imagine..."
"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this
answer. "Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"
"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said
Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him
what he was saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.
"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,
therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the
Rhetor, after a moment's pause.
"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.
The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his
breast, and began to speak.
"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said,
"and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood
with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation
on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the
preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important
mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from
the first man- a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends.
But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use
it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not
everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim,
that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their
hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to
us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery,
and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.
"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to
improve the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of
piety and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the
evil which sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you
again."
"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a
mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his
mind. He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and
he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself
vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and
deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the
three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving
mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery
mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem
to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and
regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment
he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former
faults and was ready for all that was good.
Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of
the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's
temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These
virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order.
2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4.
Love of mankind. 5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.
"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the
Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but
as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue
from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense
and peace."
"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the
Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be
so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which
is only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other
virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt
already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind,
and especially obedience- which did not even seem to him a virtue, but
a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to
submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot
what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.
The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre
whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to
all that would be required of him.
"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.
"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order
delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which
may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after
wisdom and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see
therein should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere,
more than words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further
initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the
ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A
hieroglyph," said the Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not
cognizable by the senses but which possesses qualities resembling
those of the symbol."
Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He
listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his
ordeal was about to begin.
"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor
coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give
me all your valuables."
"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was
asked to give up all he possessed.
"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."
Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage
for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that
had been done, the Rhetor said:
"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."
Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to
the Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's
left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his
trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his
right boot also and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save
this stranger the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not
necessary and gave him a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike
smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on
his face against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and
legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his further
commands.
"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief
passion," said the latter.
"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.
"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on
the path of virtue," said the Mason.
Pierre paused, seeking a reply.
"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He
went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to
give the pre-eminence.
"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.
The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this
answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that
lay on the table, again bound his eyes.
"For the last time I say to you- turn all your attention upon
yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in
passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not
without us but within...."
Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing
source of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.
BK5|CH4
CHAPTER IV
Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre,
not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized
by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his
resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming,
childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and
timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while
Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that
room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last
brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was
answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before
them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to
who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again
led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told
allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of
the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which
he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre
noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the
"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of
various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to
some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his
conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of
them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After
that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to
hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to
repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of
the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,
as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the
lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint
light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men
standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding
swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man
whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved
forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce
it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once
blindfolded again.
"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the
candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;
the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said
together: "Sic transit gloria mundi."
Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the
room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black
sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some
of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair
sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from
his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at
Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very
distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the
Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words
of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was
a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet
with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something
resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it
stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the
brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right
angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself
at the Gates of the Temple.
"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.
"Oh, hush, please!" said another.
Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without
obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I
doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember
this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the
serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone
through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at
his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,
prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the
feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before.
When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white
leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a
trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master
addressed him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain
the whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity;
then of the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse
his own heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart
of his neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that
Pierre could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second
pair of man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of
the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these
woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom
you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity
of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in
Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that
these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand
Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew
embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a
child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily,
and an awkward pause followed.
This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to
the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation
of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a
trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows,
and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs
of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit
down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very
long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a
state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the
last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind.
"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the
Grand Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any
distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid
whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that
falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and
courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy
happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that
bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him
good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of
the ancient dignity which thou hast lost."
He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with
tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to
answer the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met
him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all
these men only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work
with them.
The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down
in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the
necessity of humility.
The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,
and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of
Alms" went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to
subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride
subscribed the same amount as the others.
The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he
had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of
years, had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his
former habits and way of life.
BK5|CH5
CHAPTER V
The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was
sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance
of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things,
a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now
and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he
formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at
the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the
Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre
proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to
the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when
Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.
"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you
quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said
Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you
positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was
before the Jews."
Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.
"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I
know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as
becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go
into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her
and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added,
lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here.
Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply
a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her
a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or
else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to
suffer for it."
Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.
"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a
keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to
Helene."
Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili
did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to
speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he
had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words
of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him.
He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with
himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life- to
say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other,
whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to
Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he
would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what
he said now his future depended- whether he would follow the same
old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on
which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.
"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and
I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."
But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,
without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his
father, muttered in a whisper:
"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up
and opened the door for him.
"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of
confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.
"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"
"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go
without receiving any explanation.
A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the
Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went
away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and
Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new
activity.
BK5|CH6
CHAPTER VI
The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite
of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the
principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the
duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of
society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension
when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was
the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society
after his marriage- when the marriageable daughters and their
mothers had nothing to hope from him- especially as he did not know
how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was
blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and
subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after
Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received
by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade
of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her
husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with
characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its
significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to
endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross
laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly.
He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to
his forehead, remarked:
"A bit touched- I always said so."
"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre,
"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her
priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved
ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was
in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and
when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my
soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then
and foretold all that has happened."
Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of
soirees as before- such as she alone had the gift of arranging- at
which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom
of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it.
Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions
were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new
and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the
state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court
society so dearly and distinctly indicated.
Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's
destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the
surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when
our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with
Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The
"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene,
forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte
who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a
young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit"
(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor
and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons.
The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening
was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from
the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.
The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company
that evening was this:
"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to
countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance
and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not
cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say
to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as
voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"
When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the
drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the
conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic
relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.
Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and
self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the
uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his
respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle.
Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him
to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered
description of each.
charge d'affaires from Copenhagen- a profound intellect," and
simply, "Mr. Shitov- a man of great merit"- this of the man usually so
described.
Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the
peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his
service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a
very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to
Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He
had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which
he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign
might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to
which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or
work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to
get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often
surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of
others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery
his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all
his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich,
but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and
would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to
be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in
an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of
only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use
to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of
the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant
to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of
his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he
considered an important step up in the service, and he at once
understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest
he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising
the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present,
and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to
him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.
"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable
that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure
them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the
actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge
d'affaires.
"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect,"
with a subtle smile.
"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of
Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have
thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."
"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some
reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined
French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing
with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."*
*"Europe will never be our sincere ally."
After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the
King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.
Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his
turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his
neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those
of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile.
Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally
asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state
he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told
them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies
and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of
his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he
engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the
novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her
visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was
shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and
seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon
as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile.
"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that
implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this
was absolutely necessary.
"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."
Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a
conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the
pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.
"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her
eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is
such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before
her- please don't! It is too painful for her!"
BK5|CH7
CHAPTER VII
When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte
had the ear of the company.
Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and
having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.
"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again
laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna
Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to
say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious
Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.
"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but
Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and
again, as soon as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and
said no more.
Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed
him firmly.
"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"
Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.
"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a
joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that
evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight
pour le Roi de Prusse!"
Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or
appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody
laughed.
"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,
shaking her little shriveled finger at him.
"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right
principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.
The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on
the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end
of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were
mentioned.
"You know N- N- received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?"
said "the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S- S- get the
same distinction?"
"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but
not a distinction," said the diplomatist- "a gift, rather."
"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."
"It's impossible," replied another.
"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."
When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the
evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing
significant command to come to her on Tuesday.
"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile
toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile
with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's
wish.
It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening
about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see
him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he
came on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon,
Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for
him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to
him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said
unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face:
"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!"
During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the
countess' house.
BK5|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.
Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind."
Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and
from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and
therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski,
Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.
In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief
then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout
Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly
noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed,
he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been
appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for
action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually
traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic
in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his
subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details
himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from
her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with
the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called
him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse
Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of
the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew
as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately
fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give
her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel- as she called
her nephew- and playing with him.
Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over
the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble
monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread
wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly
raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the
chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that
the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But
what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing
to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to
give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he
had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this
to me?"
Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him
a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald
Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with
Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal
to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he
needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building
and spent most of his time there.
After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved
not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and
everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the
recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his
son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old
man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new
campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the
war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.
On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.
Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's
absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman
who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and
letters for Prince Andrew.
Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the
letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there.
He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.
"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some
papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting
on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he
poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of
water.
"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking
unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the
mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought
it.
There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a
table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew
was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was
burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light
did not fall on the cot.
"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside
the cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."
"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things
off- and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an
exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.
"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep,"
said the princess in a tone of entreaty.
Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed,
wineglass in hand.
"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.
"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said
Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had
prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was
calling him in a whisper.
It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the
boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their
household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,
they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by
sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one
another and reproached and disputed with each other.
"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the
maid.
Prince Andrew went out.
"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal
instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his
father's letter, he returned to the nursery.
"Well?" he asked.
"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says
that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary
with a sigh.
Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.
"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the
drops and again went up to the cot.
"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.
But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his
eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.
"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you- give it him!"
Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively
and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed
hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and
sat down on a sofa in the next room.
He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them
mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using
abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as
follows:
Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful
news- if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete
victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,
and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a
German- I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at
Korchevo- a certain Khandrikov- is up to; till now the additional
men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say
I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have
received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from
Petenka- he took part in it- and it's all true. When mischief-makers
don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be
fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without
delay and carry out instructions!
Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It
was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded
it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with
the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"
"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought
he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.
Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the
baby.
"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince
Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a
victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's
always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading
Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without
understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,
what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of
all else.
BK5|CH9
CHAPTER IX
Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and
though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,
he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and
self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation
of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in
Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the
bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the
army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at
Preussisch-Eylau.
"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote
Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I
have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for
me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.
"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks
the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only
betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it
turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our
fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the
Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had
begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and
installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.
"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to
Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my
palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as
circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that
end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves
on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first
demand.
"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the
King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender....
All this is absolutely true.
"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,
it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,
in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have
everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,
a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success
might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so
young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and
Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,
Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy
and triumph.
"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails
are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything
himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those
meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters
addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field
marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters
from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts
into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything,
seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor
addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No
confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then!
Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to
General Bennigsen:
'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the
army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it
is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done,
and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must
think of retreating to our frontier- which do today.'
"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a
saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite
prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on
the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden,
having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising
him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior
of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some
regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,
Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been
eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I
recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the
information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another
fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.
"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is
already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great
and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most
gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play
the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My
removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir- a blind man
has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'
"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,
isn't it logical?
"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly
interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it
appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.
Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen
does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who
are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the
opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He
does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great
victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as
you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won
or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say;
and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In
short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg
with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive
from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his
victory, does not give up the command of the army to General
Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and
interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should
be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General
Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So
energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an
unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our
enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General
Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy
force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to
escape him. Buxhowden pursues us- we scuttle. He hardly crosses the
river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.
Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the
result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on
Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the
news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our
appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is
vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But
as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-
namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,
biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads
impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last
campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour
the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The
inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,
and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our
headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to
disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty
portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all
commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much
fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."
At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,
in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust
Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When
he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away.
It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life
out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his
eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what
he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly
he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized
with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he
was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and
opened it.
Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from
him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the
cot.
"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind
him.
As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was
seized by an unreasoning panic- it occurred to him that the child
was dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.
"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his
forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find
it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the
curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could
not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about
till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and
was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.
Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had
already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught
him, tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The
soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand;
even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was
not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent.
Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart,
this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him,
gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed
under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow
appeared under the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but
still gazing at the infant's face listened to his regular breathing.
The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with
noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind
her. Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his
hand to her. She pressed it.
"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.
"I was coming to tell you so."
The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his
forehead against the pillow.
Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain
her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy
that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him,
slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a
warning gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain
as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut
off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away,
ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.
"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.
BK5|CH10
CHAPTER X
Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went
to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs,
taking with him full directions which he had written down for his
own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.
When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office
and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that
steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs- and that till then
they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their
babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to
the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and
hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the
estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among
them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the
young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of
money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp
and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed
hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them,
including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they
could best handle the master for their own ends.
The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,
but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go
into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.
Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into
an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a
year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him
an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the
following budget:
About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,
about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town
house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was
given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was
sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The
building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in
each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about
100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to
borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of
fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories
and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for
which he had very little aptitude or inclination- practical business.
He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he
felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these
consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with
them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the
state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the
necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities
with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand,
Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,
which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the
loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy
emancipation.
The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested
selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down
the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all
of which operations according to him were connected with such
complicated measures- the removal of injunctions, petitions,
permits, and so on- that Pierre became quite bewildered and only
replied:
"Yes, yes, do so."
Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled
him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only
tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The
steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he
considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and
troublesome to himself.
In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened
to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer,
the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's
greatest weakness- the one to which he had confessed when admitted
to the Lodge- were so strong that he could not resist them. Again
whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush
and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches,
and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg.
Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old
life, only in new surroundings.
Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not
fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of
moral life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two- morality
and the love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he
fulfilled another of the precepts- that of reforming the human race-
and had other virtues- love of his neighbor, and especially
generosity.
In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way
he intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his
orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom
God had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.
The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts
almost insane- unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the
serfs- made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation
of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large
buildings- schools, hospitals, and asylums- on all the estates
before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for
ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for
just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the
bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of
his master, would touch and delude him.
The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna
carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on
Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more
picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and
touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere
were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a
joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants
presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint
Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits
he had conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at
their own expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In
another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him
for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate the priest,
bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by
the count's generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and
religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick
buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for
hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened.
Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to which the
serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching
thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.
What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him
with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter
and Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's
day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had
begun the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in
that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know
that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his
land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know
that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by
his exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let
him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments.
He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being
built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though
lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown
him in the accounts that the serfs' payments had been diminished by
a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a
half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and
quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left
Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"
as he called the Grand Master.
"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"
thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"
He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at
receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do
for these simple, kindly people.
The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly
through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with
a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,
pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above
all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it
was.
Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be
difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would
happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though
reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do
all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly
that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all
measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to
release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire
and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing
empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all
that other people's serfs gave- that is to say, all that could be
got out of them.
BK5|CH11
CHAPTER XI
Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest
state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of
visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.
Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among
fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The
house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and
with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that
stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which
were a few fir trees.
The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables,
a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade
still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly
laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps
and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were
straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore
an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre
met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a
small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked
after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage,
said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little
anteroom.
Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house
after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend
in Petersburg.
He quickly entered the small reception room with its
still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone
farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.
"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.
"A visitor," answered Anton.
"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed
back.
Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to
face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre
embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek
and looked at him closely.
"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.
Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with
surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly
and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and
lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give
them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner,
paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre
till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow
indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.
As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged
separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on
anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things
they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the
conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first
lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's
journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and
despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now
still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to
Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past
or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to
sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter
began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms,
dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's
presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had
been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He
checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible
desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a
quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.
"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly
know myself again."
"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince
Andrew.
"Well, and you? What are your plans?"
"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said,
as if astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean
to settle here altogether next year...."
Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face,
which had grown much older.
"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.
"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your
travels and all you have been doing on your estates."
Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as
far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had
been made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what
he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he
listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what
Pierre was telling him.
Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company
and at last became silent.
"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who
evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I
am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am
going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of
course you know her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a
visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after
dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?"
They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the
political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know
each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and
interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its
buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of
a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted
himself:
"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and
then we'll set off."
At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.
"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.
Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said
hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you
know it is all over, and forever."
"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."
"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"
"And so you had to go through that too!"
"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said
Pierre.
"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good
thing really."
"No, to kill a man is bad- wrong."
"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to
know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will
err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."
"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with
pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was
roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought
him to his present state.
"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.
"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for
ourselves."
"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is
something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing
more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new
outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real
evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of
those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole
philosophy now."
"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No,
I can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to
have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself
and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"
(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others,
only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall
not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are
saying." Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.
"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her,"
he said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a
short pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for
yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found
happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the
reverse. I lived for glory.- And after all what is glory? The same
love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for
their approval.- So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite,
ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only
for myself."
"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,
growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"
"But that's just the same as myself- they are not others," explained
Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and
Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil.
Le prochain- your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."
And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He
evidently wished to draw him on.
"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.
"What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even
doing a little- though I did very little and did it very badly? What
evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people
like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and
truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed
in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and
consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying
of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be
rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum
for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a
peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give
them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have
done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done
something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a
good action, and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do
not think so yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I
know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is
the only sure happiness in life."
"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said
Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build
hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's
right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not
by us. Well, you want an argument," he added, come on then."
They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which
served as a veranda.
"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools,"
he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you
want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking
off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual
needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only
happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him
of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him
my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it,
physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his
existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help
thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I
can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help
thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he
would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand
his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he
could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.
The third thing- what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew
crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit,
he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag
about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It
would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being
born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if
you grudged losing a laborer- that's how I regard him- but you want to
cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides,
what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said
he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.
Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that
it was evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he
spoke readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long
time. His glance became more animated as his conclusions became more
hopeless.
"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand
how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long
ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so
that I don't live at all- everything seems hateful to me... myself
most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with
you?..."
"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the
contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible.
I'm alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best
I can without hurting others."
"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would
sit without moving, undertaking nothing...."
"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do
nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me
the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to
get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary
qualifications for it- the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness
necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be
built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And
now there's this recruiting."
"Why aren't you serving in the army?"
"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very
much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active
Russian army. And I won't- not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk
threatening Bald Hills- even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian
army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his
composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command
of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is
to serve under him."
"Then you are serving?"
"I am."
He paused a little while.
"And why do you serve?"
"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men
of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he
has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited
power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a
commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had
been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's
clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I
am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and
now and then can save him from actions which would torment him
afterwards."
"Well, there you see!"
"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did
not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who
had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been
very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father- that again
is for myself."
Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered
feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there
was no desire to do good to his neighbor.
"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is
a very good thing, but not for you- I don't suppose you ever had
anyone flogged or sent to Siberia- and still less for your serfs. If
they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are
any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and
the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it
is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon
themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being
able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people
I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You
may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those
traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more
irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot
restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable."
Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking
that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his
father's case.
He did not reply.
"So that's what I'm sorry for- human dignity, peace of mind, purity,
and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you
may, always remain the same backs and foreheads."
"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said
Pierre.
BK5|CH12
CHAPTER XII
In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and
drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the
silence now and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good
temper.
Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making
in his husbandry.
Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and
apparently immersed in his own thoughts.
He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did
not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid,
enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he
should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument,
would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid
of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.
"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his
head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so?
You should not think so."
"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.
"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought
like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't
smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it
was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,
aspects of humanity."
And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince
Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed
from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality,
brotherhood, and love.
"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the
rest is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that
outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree
with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to
live out his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But
make our fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood,
give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once
feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible
chain the beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.
Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence
to Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels
prevented his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it,
and by the peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by
his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that
Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.
They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they
had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed
on it, they also stepped on the raft.
Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed
silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.
"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you
silent?"
"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very
well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of
life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who
are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see
what you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I
don't see it."
Pierre interrupted him.
"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.
"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no
time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as
he knew Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.
"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor
could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the
end of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to
the fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the
universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we
who are now the children of earth are- eternally- children of the
whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast
harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between
the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of
beings in whom the Deity- the Supreme Power if you prefer the term- is
manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to
man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go
farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing
vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always
have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits,
and that in this world there is truth."
"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not
that which can convince me, dear friend- life and death are what
convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound
up with one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped
to make it right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away),
"and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to
exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe
there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me,"
said Prince Andrew.
"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"
"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the
necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with
someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere,
and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have
looked in...."
"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a
Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is- God."
Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long
since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The
sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was
starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the
astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on
the raft and talked.
"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and
man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must
live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on
this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there,
in the Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.
Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening
to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of
the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness.
Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the
waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew
felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words,
whispering:
"It is true, believe it."
He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at
Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his
superior friend.
"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is
time to get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at
the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since
Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on
that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering,
something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and
youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the
customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling
which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting
with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrew's life. Though
outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he
began a new life.
BK5|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the
front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the
house, Prince Andrew with asmile drew Pierre's attention to a
commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a
wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black
garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up.
Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the
carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.
"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have
mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she
disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she
receives them."
"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet
them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was
expected back soon.
The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any
minute.
Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always
kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house;
he himself went to the nursery.
"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned.
"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her
'God's folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you
will see her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."
"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.
"Come, and you'll see for yourself."
Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her
face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before
the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing
a monk's cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near
them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek
expression on her childlike face.
"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild
reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her
chickens.
"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"* she
said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,
and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife,
and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward
him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to
say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people."
After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.
*"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."
"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a
smile at the young pilgrim.
"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez
que c'est une femme,"* said Prince Andrew to Pierre.
"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"*[2] Princess Mary repeated.
*"You must know that this is a woman."
*[2] "For heaven's sake."
It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the
pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were
their customary long-established relations on the matter.
"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au
contraire m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre
intimite avec ce jeune homme."*
*"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for
explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."
"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and
seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)
into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,
looked round at them all with crafty eyes.
Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite
unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,
lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had
turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside
it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered
another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked
with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.
"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.
"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime
I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at
the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a
great and wonderful blessing has been revealed."
"And was Ivanushka with you?"
"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a
bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."
Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell
what she had seen.
"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."
"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.
"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him,
Pelageya."
"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he
is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles,
I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of
God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are
you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a
wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On
hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."
All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,
drawing in her breath.
"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing
has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed
Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."
"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess
Mary, flushing.
"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he
inquired.
"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the
face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek
it drops and drops...."
"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who
had listened attentively to the pilgrim.
"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,
turning to Princess Mary for support.
"They impose on the people," he repeated.
"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing
herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did
not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said
it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the
Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make
you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the
real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought,
quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and
says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar
bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the
icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin
to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning
to Pierre.
"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.
"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said
Prince Andrew, with a smile.
Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.
"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,
her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you
said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My
dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary.
She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She
evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a
house where such things could be said, and was at the same time
sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.
"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come
to me?..."
"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma
parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.* I did not mean anything, I
was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his
offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."
*"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."
Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a
look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now
at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.
BK5|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a
long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his
hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks
she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking
some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with
the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to
another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and
there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want
to come out, even into the light of heaven again."
Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went
out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,
Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.
"You are very kind," she said to him.
"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them
so well and have the greatest respect for them."
Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.
"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as
of a brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added
hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words.
"I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but
last spring his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away
for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has
not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our
sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in
good spirits, but that is the effect of your visit- he is not often
like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs
activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others
don't notice it, but I see it."
Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door,
hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince
Andrew and Pierre also went out into the porch.
"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out
of, the carriage.
"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young
stranger was.
The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.
Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study,
found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining
that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old
prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.
"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then
there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense- old women's
nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on
the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,
evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over
the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to
him and began to talk business.
"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He
came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner- I gave him a pretty
dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince
went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A
fine fellow- your friend- I like him! He stirs me up. Another says
clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks
rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps
I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make
friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after
Pierre, through the door.
Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the
strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm
was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his
family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the
gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre
at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.
Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the
pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old
"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and
let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and
Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he
talked to the old prince.
The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's
account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was
extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.
When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met
together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always
do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one
said anything but what was good of him.
BK5|CH15
CHAPTER XV
When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time,
how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole
regiment.
On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his
home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned
uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and
saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully
shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been
asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace
him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov
experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister
had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not
speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and
precious as his parents' house.
When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and
had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had
gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little
interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and
bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense
of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in
his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was
none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not
know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya
with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was
no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were
not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a
variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of
whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there
were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his
father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in
the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided
into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all
the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,
everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a
good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The
canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there
was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that
was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,
to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered- and all
would be well.
Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this
regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on
lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was
all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for
which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could
not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault
by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a
perfectly first-rate comrade and officer- in a word, a splendid man
altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so
possible in the regiment.
After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his
parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now
resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the
debt to his parents.
Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at
Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It
was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new
campaign.
The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had
served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in
Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of
the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau
and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the
campaign, was attached to Platov's division.
Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several
times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the
enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal
Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed
immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German
village.
A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river
broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions
for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no
transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and
deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of
these.
Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled- if
any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be
taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead
of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their
rations.
The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but
had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the
hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or
the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and
hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the
hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just
showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for
some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter,
but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with
their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as
it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke out broke
out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face,
which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of
all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on
"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of
the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man
and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.
The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the
thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with
tufts of felty winter hair.
Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living
just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms,
the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed
their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the
thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the
caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food
and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,
steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked
sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of
Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly,
or the priest's laborer Mikolka.
The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,
half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes
and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied
themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money,
though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as
quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely
spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly
because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.
Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they
had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's
family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him,
Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a
part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to
expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action
greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging
expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come
in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old
Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,
hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a
conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his
own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was
recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing
Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it
would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish
girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and
said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov
could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov,
who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish
girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and
Rostov replied:
"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't
tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."
Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room
without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.
"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov
noticed tears in his eyes.
BK5|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,
but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at
Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that
place.
They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth
hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and
turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come
into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet
eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,
steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The
trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the
squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite
the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the
earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and
this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed
that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit
up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living
luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a
board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but
mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from
the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the
steps in the "reception room"- as Denisov called that part of the hut-
and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always
some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.
In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and
eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers,
changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got
warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner,
and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on
but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his
head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being
promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and was
awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he wanted a
talk.
Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the
hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he
was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.
"I ordered you not to let them that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov
was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some
fwom the fields."
"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they
don't obey," answered the quartermaster.
Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let
him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down- capitally!"
He could hear that Lavrushka- that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's- was
talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying
something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when
he had gone out for provisions.
Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.
"Saddle! Second platoon!"
"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.
Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy
boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things
about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again.
In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered
vaguely and crossly that he had some business.
"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov
going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing
through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had
gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not
leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The
weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet
were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which
buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle
of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen
hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the
hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars
surrounded them.
"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are
the provisions."
"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"
A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two
infantry officers with whom he was talking.
Rostov went to meet them.
"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man,
evidently very angry, was saying.
"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.
"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny- seizing the
transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two
days."
"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.
"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry
officer, raising his voice.
"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing
his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not
buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the
officers.
"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not
riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."
"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and
Denisov turned his horse on the officer.
"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and
turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.
"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov
after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a
mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.
"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said.
"After all, can't let our men starve."
The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an
infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport
was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The
soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared
them with the other squadrons.
The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and
holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:
"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and
won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff
and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if
possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not,
as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a
row and the affair may end badly."
From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the
staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he
came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen
him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov
asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and
threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.
Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should
undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.
"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but
I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'...
Ice..." he muttered.
The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely
necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken
from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had
happened to him.
"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's
quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden
twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait.
Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief- also took it
into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'- 'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is
not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him
who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be
silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the
commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go
to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think?
No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov,
hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently
that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped
about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is
it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his
snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him...
Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful
and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have
killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"
"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've
set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."
Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke
calm and cheerful.
But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and
Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully
showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental
commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.
The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad
turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the
severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,
degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.
The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after
seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the
chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,
threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the
office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm
of one of them.
In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing,
that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed
up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not
in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels
dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not
easily forget.
Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew
him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart
he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was
evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices
from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered
to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before
the staff of his division to explain his violence at the
commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two
Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his
wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A
bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of
his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the
regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to
excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.
BK5|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the
Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was
proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no
news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and
the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get
leave to visit Denisov in hospital.
The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice
devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when
it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a
particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its
foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken
soldiers wandering about.
The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window
frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a
wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged
soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in
the sunshine in the yard.
Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of
putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army
doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian
assistant.
"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to
Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."
The assistant asked some further questions.
"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed
Rostov coming upstairs.
"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The
bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a
pesthouse, sir."
"How so?" asked Rostov.
"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he
pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have
died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"
said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been
invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."
Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,
who was wounded.
"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in
charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's
well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of
coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed.
"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There
are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant.
The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and
impatient for the talkative doctor to go.
"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."
"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of
indifference.
The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.
"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.
Rostov described Denisov's appearance.
"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one
is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list.
Have you got it, Makeev?"
"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if
you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he
added, turning to Rostov.
"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to
stay here yourself."
But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the
assistant to show him the way.
"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.
Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell
was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and
collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the
right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in
underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked
with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at
the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor
on straw and overcoats.
"May I go in and look?"
"What is there to see?" said the assistant.
But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,
Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had
already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It
was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where
it originated.
In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large
windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to
the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were
unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were
conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all
looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief,
reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of
the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining
rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently
around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him,
almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a
sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The
man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was
purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,
and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood
out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the
floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov
listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov
glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in
his place and bring him water.
"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.
Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from
the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.
"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and
evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.
"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov,
pointing to the Cossack.
"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his
eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not
move.
"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov,
lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an
intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the
corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier
as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently
fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to
him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to
speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg
bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His
neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from
him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose.
His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled
back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his
back.
"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.
"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier,
his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men,
not dogs."
"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away- taken away at
once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."
"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes
and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of
reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the
room.
BK5|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the
officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood
open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers
were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in
hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the
officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking
about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with
a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember
where he had seen him before.
"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,
don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had
a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the
empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich
Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.
"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence
came sounds of several laughing voices.
"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov,
still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong
in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those
envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face
of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.
Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket,
though it was nearly noon.
"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in
the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under
this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling
showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the
intonations of his voice.
His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six
weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as
the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that
struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to
see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the
regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov
spoke of these matters did not listen.
Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of
the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on
outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was
only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On
Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced
from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission
and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he
began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the
stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,
who had gathered round Rostov- a fresh arrival from the world outside-
gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his
answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had
already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the
man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his
bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin
still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of
the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.
"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best
simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will
now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."
"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he
tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like
an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber
I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging
wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've
served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I
to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is
what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"
"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the
point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to
submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told
you it was a bad business.
"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.
"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and
you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"
(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a
better opportunity."
"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him,
went on reading his paper.
Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he
instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other
officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of
service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward
hasty temper.
When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than
an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the
day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades,
who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their
stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.
Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked
Denisov whether he had no commission for him.
"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and
taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where
he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.
"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he
said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it
was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which
Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat
officials, simply asked for pardon.
"Hand it in. It seems..."
He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.
BK5|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state
of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the
Emperor.
On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in
Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom
he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the
stay at Tilsit.
"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,
whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.
"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.
Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that
he was being tested.
"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The
general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.
"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.
Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two
Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw
Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the
river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in
silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's
arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon-
reaching the raft first- stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and
held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion.
Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it
his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note
it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of
those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and
listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the
moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and
did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The
interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this
down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic
importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a
matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the
service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the
two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth
his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but
people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had
executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew
his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as
at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been
surprised had he been absent.
Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.
Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond
of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French
officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and
lunching with him and Boris.
On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski
arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an
aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of
the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old
aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the
darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress. came to Tilsit
and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.
Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far
from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and
the French- who from being foes had suddenly become friends- that
had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte
and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,
contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's
Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken
prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.
Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the
road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible
between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov
was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers
in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see
from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank.
As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the
door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at
the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the
threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.
Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet
him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face
on first recognizing Rostov.
"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,
coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first
impulse.
"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have
business," he said coldly.
"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.
Dans un moment je suis a vous,"* he said, answering someone who called
him.
*"In a minute I shall be at your disposal."
"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.
The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face:
having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly
took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes,
looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by
something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it
seemed to Rostov.
"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris,
and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and
introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian,
but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.
"Count Zhilinski- le Comte N. N.- le Capitaine S. S.," said he,
naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed
reluctantly, and remained silent.
Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very
willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not
appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the
same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with
which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the
Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,
addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter
had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.
"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.
Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look
of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a
bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion
and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he
alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The
looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he
sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.
"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk
over my business and I'll go away."
"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and
lie down in my room and have a rest."
"Yes, really..."
They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without
sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in
some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,
through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor
on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he
and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not
look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one
leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender
fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the
report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight
into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this
happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.
"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe
in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the
Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in
general, I think..."
"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost
shouted, not looking Boris in the face.
Boris smiled.
"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."
At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.
"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and
remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long
time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.
BK5|CH20
CHAPTER XX
Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on
Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance
as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,
and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the
following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were
signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the
Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of
the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening,
given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk
battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet.
Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when
the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and
early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian
clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the
French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the
Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables
being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the
Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets,
with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags
and bunting were displayed.
"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's
settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave
here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not
without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is
here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house
where Alexander lodged.
Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were
assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.
"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to
hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really
arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand
on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows
everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even
if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought
he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor
occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go
in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for
Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination
he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket
and went straight to the house.
"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he
thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious
of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall
at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will
even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice
is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.
And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the
porch of the Emperor's house.
A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right
he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading
to the lower floor.
"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.
"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas,
with a tremor in his voice.
"A petition? This way, to the officer the officer on duty" (he was
shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."
On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he
was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so
fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run
away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and
Rostov entered.
A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high
boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on,
standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of
his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that,
for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was
speaking to someone in the adjoining room.
"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing
Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.
"What is it? A petition?"
"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.
"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.
"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."
"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."
Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped
him.
"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"
"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.
"Are you an officer?"
"Lieutenant Count Rostov."
"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with
you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed
him.
Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there
were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to
pass.
Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding
himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to
shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety
of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was
making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a
familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.
"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep
voice.
It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special
favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the
division in which Rostov was serving.
Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the
kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an
excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for
Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the
general shook his head gravely.
"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."
Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining
Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were
heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the
porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and
went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at
Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a
footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the
danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together
with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those
features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the
same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm
and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its
old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment- white
chamois-leather breeches and high boots- and wearing a star Rostov did
not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out
into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his
arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by
his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and,
recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and
beckoned to him.
All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for
some time to the Emperor.
The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his
horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers
(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside
his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the
cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be
heard by all:
"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than
I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.
The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and
rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,
Rostov ran after him with the crowd.
BK5|CH21
CHAPTER XXI
The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a
battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a
battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.
As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which
presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the
opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It
could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue
uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his
shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse
with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching
Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his
cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit
well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and
"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both
Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face
wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying
something affable to him.
In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which
were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of
Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander
treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease
with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday
matter to him.
Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites,
approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came
straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly
found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the
front row, was afraid he might be recognized.
"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the
bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating
every letter.
This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into
Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to
him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.
"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,"
added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and
assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian
ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes
fixed on their Emperor.
"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said
Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the
commander of the battalion.
Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,
tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him
rushed forward and picked it up.
"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked
Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.
"To whomever Your Majesty commands."
The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing
back, remarked:
"But we must give him an answer."
Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his
scrutiny.
"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.
"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the
first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.
"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who
did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look
at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to
soldiers called before the ranks.
Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out
behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing
at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed
something from one to another, and a page- the same one Rostov had
seen the previous evening at Boris'- ran forward and, bowing
respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a
moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without
looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between
them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently
gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to
imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally,
and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's
buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his
hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be
forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the
world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and,
dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the
cross would adhere there. And it really did.
Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross
and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little
man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still
standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into
Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go
away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for
some time in that rigid position.
The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,
breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the
tables prepared for them.
Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers
embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of
officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of
Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables
in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and
happy, passed by Rostov.
"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them
was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"
"I have."
"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."
"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension
for life."
"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a
shaggy French cap.
"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"
"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.
"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';
yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it
and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's
Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He
must respond in kind."
Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk
banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner
of a house.
"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could
not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and
troubled was Rostov's face.
"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.
"You'll call round?"
"Yes, I will."
Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from
a distance. a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on
which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in
his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his
submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and
its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of
dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next
he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white
hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then
why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he
thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He
caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.
The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of
hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to
eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.
There he found so many people, among them officers who, like
himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in
getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The
conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his
comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace
concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held
out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops
had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly
the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by
himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without
reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet
could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying
that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting
with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the
officers:
"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly
rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What
right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or
his actions!"
"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,
justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except
on the supposition that he was drunk.
But Rostov did not listen to him.
"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,"
he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished,
it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the
Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an
alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If
once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred
will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God- nothing!"
shouted Nicholas, banging the table- very little to the point as it
seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own
thoughts.
"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's
all...." said he.
"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.
"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another
bottle!" he shouted.
In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview
with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg
there was much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.
BK5|CH22
CHAPTER XXII
In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon
and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on
Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our
old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and
in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and
one of Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations
of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time
keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken
in all the departments of government.
Life meanwhile- real life, with its essential interests of health
and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in
thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and
passions- went on as usual, independently of and apart from
political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all
the schemes of reconstruction.
BOOK SIX: 1808 - 10
CHAPTER I
Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.
All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates- and constantly
changing from one thing to another had never accomplished- were
carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible
difficulty.
He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre
lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.
On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and
became free agricultural laborers- this being one of the first
examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory
labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for
Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and
writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs.
Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father
and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he
spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince
Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the
world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went
on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or
his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life,
these people lagged behind himself- who never left the country- in
knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.
Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great
variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a
critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with
drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations.
In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which
had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.
Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the
new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of
white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not
thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from
side to side.
They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year
before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and
green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near
the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past
strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there,
and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the
forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with
their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers
and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last
year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees
scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant
reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort
and sweated visibly.
Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter
assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for
Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.
"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful
smile.
"What?"
"It's pleasant, your excellency!"
"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the
spring, I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really
everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry
and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah,
here is one oak!"
At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of
the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and
twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as
great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its
branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge
ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and
fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the
smiling birch trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about
in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring
or notice either the spring or the sunshine.
"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not
weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always
the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!
Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too,
sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have
grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I
stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies."
As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times
to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,
too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling,
rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.
"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince
Andrew. "Let others- the young- yield afresh to that fraud, but we
know life, our life is finished!"
A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully
pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this
journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at
his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for
him to begin anything anew- but that he must live out his life,
content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring
anything.
BK6|CH2
CHAPTER II
Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the
district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of
which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the
middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him.
It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already
clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water
one longed to bathe.
Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about
which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the
grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish
cries behind some trees on the right and saw group of girls running to
cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran
a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz
dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose
locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing
that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.
Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so
beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that
slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and
was contented and cheerful in her own separate- probably foolish-
but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she
thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement
of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so
happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.
In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done
in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province
with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince
Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his
staying the night.
During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by
his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old
count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),
Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among
the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What
is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"
That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to
sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It
was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He
was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had
made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not
yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having
stayed.
He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened
the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for
this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was
fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of
pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on
the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy
vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther
back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was
a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it
shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring
sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his
eyes rested on that sky.
His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were
also awake. He heard female voices overhead.
"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew
recognized at once.
"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.
"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last
time."
Two girlish voices sang a musical passage- the end of some song.
"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."
"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming
nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the
rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard.
Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the
shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his
unintentional presence.
"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you
sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,
Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never
was such a lovely night before!"
Sonya made some reluctant reply.
"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come
here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like
sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this,
straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."
"Take care, you'll fall out."
He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice:
"It's past one o'clock."
"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"
Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting
there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.
"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed
then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.
"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while
he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that
she might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it
were on purpose," thought he.
In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of
youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his
life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down
and fell asleep at once.
BK6|CH3
CHAPTER III
Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not
waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.
It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he
drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so
strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the
harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks
before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs
dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but,
lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with
fluffy young shoots.
The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but
only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling
the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in
the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and
scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the
nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now
far away.
"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought
Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the
left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with
admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,
spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and
slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled
fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in
evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were
no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old
veteran could have produced.
"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he
was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal.
All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory.
Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face,
Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night,
and that night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly
to his mind.
"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided
finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have
in me- everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted
to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may
not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it,
but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live
in harmony!"
On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that
autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole
serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be
essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the
service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand
how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an
active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how
the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It
now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be
senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again
played an active part in life. He did not even remember how
formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it
had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after
the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the
possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or
love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to
Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer
interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,
went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he
would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled
a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.
She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked
simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing
his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling,
as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as
a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with
Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's
beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he
was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.
"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,
"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."
"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly
to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he
must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That
is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child
who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with
extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical
emotions that stirred within him.
At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work
dries men up.
BK6|CH4
CHAPTER IV
Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time
when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his
reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That
same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his
leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every
day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being
prepared that so agitated society- abolishing court ranks and
introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate
Assessor and State Councilor- and not merely these but a whole state
constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in
Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of
State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams
with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he
had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,
Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov- whom he himself
in jest had called his Comite de salut public- were taking shape and
being realized.
Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side,
and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew,
as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a
levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with
a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he
was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his
face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance
the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this
surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His
Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.
"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and
antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present
my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor
personally, but the project will speak for itself."
He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend
of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,
received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few
days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see
the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.
On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting
room at nine in the morning.
He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he
had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.
"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not
concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been
commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it
adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of
important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.
During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen
the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such
rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a
special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting
their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the
faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of
awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of
themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were
waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and
laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the
words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count
Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling
offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his
legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.
But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all
faces- that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the
adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look
and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others
had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on
duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and
frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's
audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a
harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the
officer- with pale face and trembling lips- came out and passed
through the waiting room, clutching his head.
After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer
on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."
Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man
of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep
wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an
overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without
looking at him.
"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.
"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew
quietly.
Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.
"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"
"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has
deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."
"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted
Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then- again
without looking at Prince Andrew- relapsing gradually into a tone of
grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are
many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody
designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."
"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your
excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have
presented," said Prince Andrew politely.
"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to
the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and
taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to
Prince Andrew.
Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,
misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because
resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the
Articles of War needlessly deviating."
"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired
Prince Andrew.
"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that
your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."
Prince Andrew smiled.
"I don't want one."
"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the
honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing
to Prince Andrew.
BK6|CH5
CHAPTER V
While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the
committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances,
particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need.
In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the
eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly
attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of
millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the
older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated. the reserve of the
initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the
innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned
every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast
civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was
a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a
man of genius- Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which
Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,
began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army
regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.
Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception
in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The
reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place
because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly
because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of
being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured
the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their
disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his
father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was
rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a
halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss
of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him
previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five
years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former
affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the
serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were
interested in him, and wanted to meet him.
The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew
spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his
interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that
nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the
Minister of War's anteroom).
"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael
Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He
has promised to come this evening."
"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince
Andrew.
Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's
simplicity.
"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey
continued, "and about your freed plowmen."
"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old
man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.
"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince
Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old
man uselessly.
"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.
"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow
the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult
to rule.... Just the same as now- I ask you, Count- who will be
heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"
"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,
crossing his legs and glancing round.
"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a
priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"
"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general,
but..."
Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the
arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a
large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness,
who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with
a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It
was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a
throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it
was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know.
Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily
recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never
seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed
such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet
gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid
eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such
a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such
delicate whiteness of face or hands- hands which were broad, but
very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew
had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in
hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the
Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met
and talked with Napoleon.
Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as
people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no
hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be
listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was
conversing.
Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with
particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who
judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-
especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-
expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.
Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come
sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that
the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation
of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly
turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at
him in silence.
"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as
everyone has," he said after a pause.
Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given
Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.
"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend
Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and
syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused
at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to
co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."
A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked
about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.
Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every
movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant
divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands- those
plump white hands- the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the
extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the
old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an
immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,
Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or
disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.
Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski
rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of
the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest
himself in Bolkonski.
"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated
conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said
with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile
that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the
people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince
Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action
with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very
desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because
you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not
considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the
ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and
tittle-tattle."
"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take
advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."
"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above
our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely
reestablishes natural justice."
"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,"
returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of
which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in
everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke
easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now
while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing
the famous man's personality.
"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.
"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.
"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.
"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his
idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait
incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me
paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."*
*"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.
Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means
of maintaining that sentiment."
The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much
improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested
him.
"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"* he began,
pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower
than in Russian but quite calmly.
*"If you regard the question from that point of view."
Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by
privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either
a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a
source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which
recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.
"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one
similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not
harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class
or court privilege."
"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court
privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every
courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."
"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,"
said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably
an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will
do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,
after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you,
and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."
Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and
trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.
BK6|CH6
CHAPTER VI
During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew
felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of
seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed
him in that city.
On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook
four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The
mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time
everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did
nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked,
and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.
He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the
same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy
for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was
thinking of nothing.
As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski
produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when
he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long
and confidentially.
To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and
insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the
living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he
readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a
perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the
same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and
traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human,
unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of
mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite
understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the
other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to
his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before
Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes
hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption
that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of
understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the
reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.
During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski
more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the
common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the
wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot
understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you
and I, understand what they are and who we are."
This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in
Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first
meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast
intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power,
which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince
Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to
be- one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered
important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the
standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and
clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily
agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was
only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit
to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and
everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince
Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not
allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands,
which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the
hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those
delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was
unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he
observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he
used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental
device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince
Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a
practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and
laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or
suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one
he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to
metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and
thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again
descend to the level of the original discussion.
In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince
Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and
authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur
to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is
after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had
never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And
it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly
attracted Prince Andrew.
During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a
passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt
for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village
priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account
of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to
cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to
strengthen it.
On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the
Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him
sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and
fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that
Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the
different codes.
"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,"
said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have
no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to
serve in these times!"
Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in
jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.
"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious
circle from which we must break a way out."
A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army
Regulations and- what he had not at all expected- was chairman of a
section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At
Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that
was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the
Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on
Personal Rights.
BK6|CH7
CHAPTER VII
Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to
Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found
himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He
arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members,
and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic
charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented
as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the
majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost
singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.
His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations
and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he
considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations
of the bachelor circles in which he moved.
Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre
at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to
rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under
him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under
him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had
joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who
confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his
foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground,
he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in
it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.
Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg- he had of late stood
aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost
entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew
in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely
as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,
whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under
the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at
which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and
reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in
promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay
as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother
promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on
which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.
He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first
he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the
lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the
mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold
designation of God, the three primordial elements- sulphur, mercury,
and salt- or the meaning of the square and all the various figures
of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to
which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought,
Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His
heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.
In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like
him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a
straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.
In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority)
who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and
ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without
troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and
even the Grand Master of the principal lodge.
Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,
particularly those who had lately joined. These according to
Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor
desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate
with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their
connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.
Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing.
Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him
based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry
itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path
and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of
the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the
order.
In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our
Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov
had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been
initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade,
and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the
advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons
all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it
seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and
concealing it.
A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened,
at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers
what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their
order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre
rose and began his address.
"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written
speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries
in the seclusion of our lodge- we must act- act! We are drowsing,
but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.
"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of
virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse
principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the
education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the
wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,
and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by
unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power.
"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over
vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this
world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great
endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of
today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor
revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are
very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it
quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also
because wisdom needs no violence.
"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of
preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of
conviction- aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and
patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and
attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the
power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder
and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we
must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should
be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of
citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in
their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great
aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.
This aim was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and
good and for their own benefit to follow the example and instruction
of the best and wisest men.
"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching
alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her
with special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods.
It is now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in
virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate
the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it
is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his
passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means
to that end.
"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,
each of them again training two others and all being closely united,
everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret
accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."
This speech not only made a strong impression, but created
excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it
dangerous designs of Illuminism,* met it with a coldness that
surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre
began developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long
since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some
accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that
meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of
men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself
identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his
side understood him in their own way with limitations and
alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was
to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.
*The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical
institutions.
At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will
reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue
alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.
Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would
be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for
the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.
BK6|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For
three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a
sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.
It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who
implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and
how she wished to devote her whole life to him.
At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she
would return to Petersburg from abroad.
Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre
respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and,
turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way
of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his
wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of
Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.
At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to
him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a
most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy
against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and
in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him.
Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much
importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed
him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his
wife.
"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to
blame," he thought.
If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife,
it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to
take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned
her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of
indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?
Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre
late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see
Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:
Moscow, 17th November
I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down
what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has
for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the
bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of
complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his
very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously
and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of
the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same
manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in
the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I
could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of
the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the
Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for
a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for
me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised
me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order:
(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification
and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The
improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which
is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and
self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently
of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the
greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of
this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our
impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the
human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and
profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is
attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground
Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in
the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs
he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you,
lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the
difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on
the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares
that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge- for man
can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can
only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief
virtue- love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its
vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new
life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of
his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of
life though he loves death, for which- in spite of the purity and
loftiness of his inner man- he does not yet feel himself
sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the
meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the
numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not
to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only
second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the
Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path
self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for
myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that
end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which
I will in future note down all my actions.
Petersburg, 23rd November
I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears
and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;
that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I
knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to
go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know
whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would
have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph
Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and
deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and
ought to reach a helping hand to everyone- especially to one so
closely bound to me- and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive
her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a
spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph
Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to
forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had
nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know
how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper
floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of
regeneration.
BK6|CH9
CHAPTER IX
At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at
court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each
with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French
circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev
and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled
in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was
visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging
to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.
Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the
Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the
Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant.
Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her:
"C'est un superbe animal."* Her success as a beautiful and elegant
woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer
than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two
years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme
charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."*[2] The distinguished
Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his
epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be
received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma
of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings,
to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy,
and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a
way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid,
sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her
evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy
were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a
conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment.
But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a
salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the
deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's
reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established
that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody
would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound
meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.
*"That's a superb animal."
*[2] "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."
Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He
was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no
one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general
impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he
presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and
tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his
continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt
for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not
interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence
toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore
inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as
one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased
to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he
joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of
whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not,
lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in
accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion
concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in
Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks
seriously.
Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris
Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was
the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's
return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated
him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but
sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris
behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of
deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three
years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected
him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition,
first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing
himself to suspect.
"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally
renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has
never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs
of the heart"- a statement which, though gathered from an unknown
source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence
in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a
physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed
the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.
"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like
him very much."
In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather
blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who
did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured
fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development
was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him
and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.
BK6|CH10
CHAPTER X
Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it
during that time:
24th November
Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By
Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state
and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and
dined alone- the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and
drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the
Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a
funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have
done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.
I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me
to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and
deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion,
(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the
state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the
management of my affairs.
27th November
I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,
help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the
Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we
talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new
projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my
benefactor's words- that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker
for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not
called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.
visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a
new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak
and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the
seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven
virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.
The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the
magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was
admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling
agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I
caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I
vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him
from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of
him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering
the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of
our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times
whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I
could not reply) and that according to my observation he is
incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied
and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I
had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all
the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me
that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to
stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be
eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to
the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the
true path out of the labyrinth of lies!
After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then
the following was written:
I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who
advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was
revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim
is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name
unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen,
refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt
has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane
science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human
sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to
examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is
known in its entirety and life. The Trinity- the three elements of
matter- are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and
fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it
arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts
mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other
bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the
Holy Spirit, Him!...
3rd December
Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went
and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but
instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago,
when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I
was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At
the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that
meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter
replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when
I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently
repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various
adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something
disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was
unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected
myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him
at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so
become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on
the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his
presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too
may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I
clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"
I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded
by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my
left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it
with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger
one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the
bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking
my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a
narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to
clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After
much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one
side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A.
standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden,
and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O
Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these
dogs- my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the
strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of
virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream.
7th December
I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I
was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered
incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this
could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace
him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and
grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the
teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it
seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We
were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I
wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was
saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and
the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I
was glad he noticed this. But be looked at me with vexation and jumped
up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he
had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a
kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where
there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with
longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me
frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you
know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was
my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more
abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I
was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one
should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to
understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be
ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and
found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light
of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness
comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and
bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he
wrote about "conjugal duties."
9th December
I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw
that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and
Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at
once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in
him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,
and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked
at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young,
but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite
changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by
chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And
suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered
and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of
drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his
head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent
drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the
love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a
beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and
with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know
that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of
Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing
wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My
God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am
myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my
debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!
BK6|CH11
CHAPTER XI
The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two
years they had spent in the country.
Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was
still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending
comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe- Mitenka's
management of affairs, in particular- was such that the debts
inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously
presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official
post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he
said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.
Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was
accepted.
Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without
themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of
acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they
were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow
without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.
The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in
Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country
neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,
Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their
district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the
men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in
Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and
dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'
and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young
man pays when he intends to propose.
Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at
Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He
narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air
that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he
had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.
In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had
picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp
standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his
commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this
occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again
believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two
decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in
the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in
Petersburg.
Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not
be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent
terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant
career before him and an assured position in society.
Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a
Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had
said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"* and from that moment had
made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered
the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come
to propose.
*"That girl shall be my wife."
Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not
flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an
obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess
Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good
natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it
would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that
it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were
seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above
all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though
she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had
proposed to her. So they gave their consent.
"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only
because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered
it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if
it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and
mamma are now provided for- I have arranged that rent for them in
the Baltic Provinces- and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with
her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not
marrying for money- I consider that dishonorable- but a wife should
bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the
service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is
worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable
girl, and she loves me..."
Berg blushed and smiled.
"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.
Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite
different- an unpleasant character and has not the same
intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my
fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine,"
but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly
doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke,
perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.
After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by
Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times
took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and
insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain
awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not
having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off
their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been
unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from
the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what
his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his
daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an
estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had
already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so
much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was
impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.
Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained
before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own
mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At
one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of
selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of
hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study
early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his
future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The
count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without
consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like
your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be
satisfied...."
And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the
conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did
not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at
least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters
off.
"Because, consider, Count- if I allowed myself to marry now
without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be
acting badly...."
The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and
to avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand
for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on
the shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was
impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty
thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he
added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand."
"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my
dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for
eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."
BK6|CH12
CHAPTER XII
Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which
she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four
years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her
mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of
that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not
worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question
whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding
promise tormented her.
Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen
the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed
near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.
Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and
this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders
spoke of him.
"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say
when Boris was mentioned.
Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently,
seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke
rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the
brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to
Petersburg Boris called on them.
He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was
his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of
letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between
himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He
had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with
Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to
the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he
enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the
richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be
realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her
own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the
drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.
Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining
from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had
known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a
different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous
astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha.
"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the
countess.
Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the
change in her.
"How handsome you have grown!"
"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.
"And is Papa older?" she asked.
Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with
the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He
felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced
at her occasionally.
Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were
all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at
once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess,
arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his
left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined
compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg
society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow
acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded,
when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he
had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.
All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under
her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He
looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he
was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and
took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather
mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said
to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that
he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost
without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their
former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable.
Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that
resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often
and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he
ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old
times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could
not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her
marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on
such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in
love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him
her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to
the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every
day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and
not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end.
He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her
every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.
BK6|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also
in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess- her prayerful mood dispelled- looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be
that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager,
seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down,
and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing
that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and,
rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her
slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might
become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five
pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank
into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling
up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her
chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering
herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess
finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but
seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind,
weak way.
"Now then, now then!" said she.
"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on
your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round
the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her
mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that
however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without
hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.
"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her
pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of
times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her
arms, and assumed a serious expression.
These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from
his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and
daughter.
"What is it tonight?- But I have to tell you..."
Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.
"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have
come about. Don't say it- I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her
hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"
"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say
Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what
then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his
head, I can see that...."
As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter.
Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the
mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the
countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her
by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.
Natasha was listening and considering.
"Well, what then?" said she.
"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him?
You know you can't marry him."
"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.
"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a
relation... and because you yourself don't love him."
"How do you know?"
"I know. It is not right, darling!"
"But if I want to..." said Natasha.
"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.
"But if I want to..."
"Natasha, I am in earnest..."
Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to
her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned
it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between
the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February,
March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!"
said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her
daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she
had wished to say.
"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this
friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so
intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who
visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already
have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."
"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.
"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."
"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."
"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have
a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."
"Why not, if he likes to?"
"Because I know it will end in nothing...."
"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!"
said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well,
I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it."
Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just
so," she added.
"How so, my pet?"
"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."
"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she
went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.
"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!
You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she
seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little
finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the
other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think?
Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very,
very nice. Only not quite my taste- he is so narrow, like the
dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know- gray,
light gray..."
"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.
Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would
understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is
square."
"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.
"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue
and red.... How can I explain it to you?"
"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.
"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,
and ran barefoot to her own room.
It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no
one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.
"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little
kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's
virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know
anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how
clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of
herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise
man- the wisest and best of men- who was saying it of her. "There is
everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is
unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty,
uncommonly pretty, and agile- she swims and rides splendidly... and
her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"
She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw
herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would
immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the
candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed
into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as
light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was
different.
Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him,
after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.
BK6|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 - 10 an old
grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper.
The diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.
The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered
with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit
entrance which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but
dozens of police officers and even the police master himself stood
at the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving,
with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the
carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while
ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps
which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly
and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.
Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through
the crowd and caps were doffed.
"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't
you see the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.
One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone
and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.
A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who
were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.
There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in
the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive,
that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be
arranged as it should be.
Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at
the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the
countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high
society, was to accompany them to the ball.
They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten
o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were
not yet dressed.
Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight
that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all
day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring
that they all- she herself, Mamma, and Sonya- should be as well
dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in
her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and
the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their
bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.
Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks,
and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the
openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were
already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing
dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about
helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a
looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender
shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and,
pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was
fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.
"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha
turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the
maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not
right. Come here!"
Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.
"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was
holding Natasha's hair.
"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."
"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.
"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"
"I have only my cap to pin on."
"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."
"But it's already ten."
They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had
still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.
When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under
which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,
ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother.
Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap
and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were
turning up the hem of her skirt.
The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long.
Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of
thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the
countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer
garment up high on one uplifted hand.
"Mavra, quicker, darling!"
"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."
"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door.
"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."
"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze
dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as
if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of
what she held.
Natasha began putting on the dress.
"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her
father as he opened the door- speaking from under the filmy skirt
which still covered her whole face.
Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in.
He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and
was perfumed and his hair pomaded.
"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood
in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.
"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was
pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of
her mouth to the other with her tongue.
"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she
looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."
Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress
was too long.
"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling
on her knees after her young lady.
"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in
one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck
on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set
to work once more.
At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in
her cap and velvet gown.
"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than
any of you!"
He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside
fearing to be rumpled.
"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange
it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up
her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn
off.
"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"
"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.
"What a beauty- a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the
door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!"
At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and
started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.
Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she
had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less
flurry- for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was
washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed
behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing
room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her
old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs'
servants had been.
She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,
and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they
settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.
BK6|CH15
CHAPTER XV
Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not
once had time to think of what lay before her.
In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,
she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her
there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms- with music,
flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of
Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it
would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness
and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her
only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she
entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in
front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between
the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,
and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable
for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her
eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a
hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She
could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,
and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all
her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became
her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also
talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the
landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with
diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.
Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her
reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant
procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices,
footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter
dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been
standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to
the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"* greeted the Rostovs
and Peronskaya in the same manner.
*"Delighted to see you."
The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her
black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye
involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and
gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as
hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,
irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The
host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was
his daughter.
"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.
In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting
the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front
rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were
asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those
noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.
"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.
Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important
people at the ball.
"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,"
she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray
curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he
said.
"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said
Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She
is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay
court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince- is quite mad
about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even
more run after."
She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very
plain daughter.
"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And
look, here come her suitors."
"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating
a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head
erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's
handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl.
But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say
she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she
replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he
were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.
No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still
the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply
she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the
universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him
beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"
Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the
crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly
as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through,
evidently looking for someone.
Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the
buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for
them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and
introduce partners to her.
But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome,
dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a
window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at
once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it
was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger,
happier, and better-looking.
"There's someone else we know- Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said
Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a
night with us at Otradnoe."
"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a
present la pluie et le beau temps."* He's too proud for anything.
Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing
some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one
talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him.
"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."
*"He is all the rage just now.
BK6|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and
then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor
entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up.
Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing
to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the
reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on
account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander,
Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on
to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and
several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again.
Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which
the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking
distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.
Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the
rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.
The men began to choose partners and take their places for the
polonaise.
Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing
room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the
music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came
ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya
diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and
were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the
polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and
Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not
having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms
hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,
and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight
before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She
was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people
whom Peronskaya was pointing out- she had but one thought: "Is it
possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to
dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?
They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they
were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth
looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know
how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would
enjoy dancing with me."
The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable
time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears.
She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the
other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by
themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of
strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.
Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.
The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and
looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice
and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing,
came up to them.
This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha- as if there
were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did
not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her
own green dress.
At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced
with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the
Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they
were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the
distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The
Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had
yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went
up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly
raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him.
The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly
round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding
first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room
he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible,
apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of
the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his
partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled
round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not
she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.
Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing
stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in
the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff
was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State
to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with
Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission,
could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which
various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was
saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men
intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the
circle.
Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's
presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to
dance.
Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.
"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask
her," he said.
"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to
the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere- at a ball
one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.
The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his
eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her
debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an
expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.
"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess,
with heightened color.
"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess
remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite
belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching
Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed
his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on
Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly
brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.
"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little
girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as
she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the
second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best
dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet
in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly,
and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic
happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful- compared
to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But
Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands
of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl
exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed
had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.
Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as
possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed
to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he
disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had
chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she
was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he
embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close
to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to
his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after
leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.
BK6|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and
then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young
men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous
partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She
noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did
she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French
ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or
that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and
that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special
attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only
noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his
departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew
was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the
Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight
night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha
blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if
there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had
overheard.
Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked
meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And
such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and
even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special
care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest
and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the
middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha,
still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer
chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of
declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder,
smiling at Prince Andrew.
"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see
how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love
everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was
said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the
room to choose two ladies for the figure.
"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she
will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own
surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew,
"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,
that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be
married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha,
readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself
beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up
to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and
asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not
answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said
reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?"
"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince
Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her
father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had
ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one
becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the
possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the
position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and
absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing
by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.
On her way to supper Natasha passed him.
Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of
him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of
her own happiness.
"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.
"Yes, I am very glad," he said.
"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.
"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes
all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,
loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another- and so
they ought all to be happy.
BK6|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not
dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then...
"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh,
original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That
was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea
he set to work.
But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for
work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work,
as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.
The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented
all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new
ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger- one of
those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to
the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest
partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into
Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking.
He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council
of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically.
The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such
as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said
that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the
government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor
said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts
published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening
his eyes significantly.
"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our
history," he concluded.
Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the
Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which
he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event,
now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite
insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic
account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it
matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the
Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?"
And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest
Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to
dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the
host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the
intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested
Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his
domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house
Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room
this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting
that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the
friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already
assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except
Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her
governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin.
While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a
ringing staccato laugh- a laugh such as one hears on the stage.
Someone- it sounded like Speranski- was distinctly ejaculating
ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous
laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a
strange impression on him.
He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing
between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres.
Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast,
and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had
worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a
beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski,
addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and
Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to
say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were
again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he
munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a
hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.
Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince
Andrew.
"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he
went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have
agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about
business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed
to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before
Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate
something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the
state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in
this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely
accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good
humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning
a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so
too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable
for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,
broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the
abuses that existed under the former order of things- threatening to
give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing
Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and
the talk reverted to its former lively tone.
Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find
amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his
wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety
seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's
high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter
grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and
feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no
one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood.
They all seemed very gay.
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his
remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the
water, and he could not jest with them.
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was
witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something
which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a
thing existed.
After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He
patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that
gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
The men remained at table over their port- English fashion. In the
midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish
affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish
to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
moments all were silent.
Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine
and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,"
passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk
loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier
were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as
he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests
began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.
"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his
study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski
immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses
in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg
people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the
verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his
leave.
"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.
"I promised to go to a reception."
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those
mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of
him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own
activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance
to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang
in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something
new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of
his project of army reform, which had been accepted for
consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence
simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and
submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of
which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what
length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at
those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to
the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the
Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of
the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of
himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his
occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the
peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the
Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished
that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.
BK6|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited
before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed
acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness
which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl
who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a
dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier
than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him
as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he
had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of
excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality
and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a
pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to
stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of
course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in
Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting
for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!"
In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had
already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered
it found in it a new enjoyment.
After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the
clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window
talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he
ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had
thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and
something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the
same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was
ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His
disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The
chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast
between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that
limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This
contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.
As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how
he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling
that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and
said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did.
Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to
bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having
lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again
not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and
joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own
fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha;
he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself,
and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive,
why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with
all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first
time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.
He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a
tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire
from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and
Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and
youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one
must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and
now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one
has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.
BK6|CH20
CHAPTER XX
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an
immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed
forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately
she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more
fortunate with you," he said with a smile.
"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."
"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this
with perfect conviction that this information could not but be
agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own
and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished
to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to
supper."
Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as
the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an
invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at
his house a small but select company, and why this would give him
pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or
anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the
sake of good society- that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to
come.
"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten
minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is
coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you
will do me the favor."
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at
the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were
really for their guests' arrival.
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and
pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely
buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to
her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above
one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to
her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how
have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious
and methodical."
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.
Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,
judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,
supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are
conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
*To be a man.
Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her
lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on
the lips.
"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he
continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for
society."
"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg,
pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced
at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally
claiming the honor of this visit.
"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,"
thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."
"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,"
said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say
to different people."
Berg smiled again.
"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
conversation," said he.
They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it
was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange
that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an
armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently
painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor
to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry
by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began
their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to
entertain their guest.
Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once
began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation
was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the
question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the
general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made
him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had
declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera
was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband
and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was
present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas
to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After
Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing
room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of
dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody
always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,
patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended
the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count
Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old
people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess
at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a
silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was
just as it was everywhere else.
BK6|CH21
CHAPTER XXI
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table
he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball, She was silent, and
not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from
plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around.
"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She
was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her.
After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking
five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who
had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again
at Natasha.
"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater
surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her
with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was
looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid
breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been
suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and
from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.
Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend's face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now
with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of
the six rubbers he watched her and his friend.
"Something very important is happening between them," thought
Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him
and made him neglect the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use
playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was
talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was
saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and,
asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them.
Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided
that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the
tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when
Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about
feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest
as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ
her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried
away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed
embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.
"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so
discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a
glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself),
"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is
what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"
"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a
sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to
be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed
that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to
be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.
"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera- mentioning
"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,
imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of
"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times- "in
our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted
often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that
Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie
caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about
to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:
"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but
till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you
know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who,
between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..."
(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.
"Yes, I know him..."
"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"
"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew,
blushing unexpectedly.
"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don't you think so?"
*"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."
"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very
careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of
these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew
him aside.
"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.
"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You
know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic
gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he
loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange
light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew
approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince
Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.
But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he
should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on
the affairs in Spain.
Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his
face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he
had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the
cards, the general raising his voice at the card table, and the
samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had
always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had
not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about
something important and clever. Now the general had begun such a
discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.
BK6|CH22
CHAPTER XXII
Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with
the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.
Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,
and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not
only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,
but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something
important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and
sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and
timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon
as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid
of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a
panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.
Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted
to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.
In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to
Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"
"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't
talk about that," said Natasha.
But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now
frightened, lay long time in her mother's bed gazing straight before
her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told her he
was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend the summer,
and then how he had asked her about Boris.
"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said.
"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm
with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real
thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"
"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now
go!"
"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!
Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,
surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And
could we ever have thought!..."
It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince
Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she
feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very
man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and
of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg
while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that
ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!
Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."
"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."
said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince
Andrew had written in Natasha's album.
"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"
"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"
said her mother.
"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,
shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.
At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and
telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her
his wife.
That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French
ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of
late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies
and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the
rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and
morose air.
Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous
depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the
intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly
been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had
begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark
thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than
before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his
protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the
contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally
to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;
and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with
eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he
forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to
drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after
he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a
shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the
Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with
tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.
"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.
"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book
with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy
people look at their work.
Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life
on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,
smiled at him with the egotism of joy.
"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it
yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything
like it before. I am in love, my friend!"
Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person
down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.
"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.
"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,
but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and
suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in
the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live
without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why
don't you speak?"
"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and
beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....
That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,
I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,
marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."
"But what of her?"
"She loves you."
"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into
Pierre's eyes.
"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.
"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do
you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."
"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face
really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to
Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a
different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for
life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he
made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in
his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future,
said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice,
and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this
marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he
marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange,
apart from and independent of himself.
"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of
such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling
that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into
two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the
other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom
and darkness...."
"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand
that."
"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very
happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."
"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched
and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot
appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.
BK6|CH23
CHAPTER XXIII
Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to
obtain this he started for the country next day.
His father received his son's communication with external composure,
but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to
alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life
was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want
to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With
his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for
important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole
matter.
In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards
birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young
as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special
stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son
whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly
and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg
you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as
you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your
love or passion or obstinacy- as you please- is still as great, marry!
And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the
prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his
decision.
Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his
feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that
he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to
conform to his father's wish- to propose, and postpone the wedding for
a year.
Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,
Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.
Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski
all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the
same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that
Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his
absence to herself.
Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out
anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and
listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in
the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed
to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing
at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound
to her vanity intensified her misery.
Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly
began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not
know why it is being punished.
The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to
her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:
"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about
it! He just came and then left off, left off..."
Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and
went on quietly:
"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I
have now become quite calm, quite calm."
The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which
she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she
had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went
to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud
resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished
her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and
sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened
joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes
reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying
away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so
much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she
began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the
resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the
toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the
regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to
the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it.
"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she
caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."
A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room
but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him
continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite
mood- love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha
is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male
person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they
leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could
not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.
In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but
did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When
she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for
certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.
Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.
"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."
Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room
with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his
face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat
down beside the sofa.
"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but
Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,
obviously in haste to say what he had to.
"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my
father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I
only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to
have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.
The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.
"I am at your disposal," she murmured.
Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:
something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared
straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.
"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.
Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she
was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be
decided.
"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.
Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew
and at her mother and went out.
"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said
Prince Andrew.
The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.
"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent,
looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is
agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband...
I hope... but it will depend on her...."
"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it
to me?" said Prince Andrew.
"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and
with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips
to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him
as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man.
"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your
father..."
"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express
condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a
year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.
"It is true that Natasha is still young, but- so long as that?..."
"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.
"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.
"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.
Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on
the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering
something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped
up and flew to her.
"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."
"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,
coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and
reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.
Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When
she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger
has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately
answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than
everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast
eyes.
"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"
He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned
expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you
cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"
She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed
loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.
"What is it? What's the matter?"
"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent
over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether
she might, and then kissed him.
Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find
in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly
changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of
desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,
fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful
sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present
feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger
and more serious.
"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked
Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.
"Is it possible that I- the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called
me," thought Natasha- "is it possible that I am now to be the wife and
the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father
looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no
more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies
a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he
ask me?"
"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.
"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already
been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know
yourself."
Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing
to take in the meaning of his words.
"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued
Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask
you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall
remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or
should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural
smile.
"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that
from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she
cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.
"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."
"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that
the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a
year?..."
Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.
Natasha did not hear him.
"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,
but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.
"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and
again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's
impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in
it a look of commiseration and perplexity.
"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears.
"I am so happy."
The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed
couple their blessing.
From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as
Natasha's affianced lover.
BK6|CH24
CHAPTER XXIV
No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to
Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said
that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole
burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever,
but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom.
If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would
have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her
parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came
every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an
affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to
her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite
different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them.
It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to
recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were
nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different
beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first
the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;
he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha
trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all
that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of
them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to
be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without
restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he
took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count,
fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork
with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his
presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the
evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe
and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and
Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and
Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents
betokening that it had to be.
In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always
accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting
together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and
go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely
spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to
speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which
she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his
son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now- Natasha
particularly liked it in him- and said that his son would not live
with them.
"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.
"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."
"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing
his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding
fault with us."
Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask
his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old
countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting
frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for
leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew
spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him
with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed
attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in
perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover
something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?"
Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic
of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince
Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned
himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always
felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the
thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not
terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and
cold.
On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought
with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.
Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the
countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,
thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.
"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"
"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."
And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of
his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.
"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known
him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,"
Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness- "I am going away and
heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know
I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when
I am not here..."
"What can happen?"
"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,
Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for
advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but
he has a heart of gold."
Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew
himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would
act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that
day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not
understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking
leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a
tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and
which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone;
but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no
interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he
go away?"
But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around
her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and
became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy,
as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of
face.
BK6|CH25
CHAPTER XXV
During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more
irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of
his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out
her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.
Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys- her
nephew, little Nicholas, and religion- and these were the favorite
subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken
of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or
the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"- little
Nicholas- "into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants
a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence
how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.
He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her,
but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame
toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of
it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought
of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for
her in one clear and simple law- the law of love and self-sacrifice
taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself
was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other
people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.
During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had
been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known
him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him,
but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a
long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed
that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.
Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend
Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls
dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in
mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey.
Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.
Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a
special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and
your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone,
can- I will not say comfort us- but save us from despair. Religion
alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend:
why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in
life- not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of
others- are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons,
or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left
living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget- that of
my dear sister-in-law- left that impression on me. Just as you ask
destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that
angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there
were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think,
dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my
petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in
what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness
of the Creator, whose every action, though generally
incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love
for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically
innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a
young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been
so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly
Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably
she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not
to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the
most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all
our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not
occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now
they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend,
only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a
principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without
His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and
so whatever befalls us is for our good.
You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my
wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You
will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte!
The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he
cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This
irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.
He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal
terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own,
the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite
indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks
with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and
especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at
Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great
man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.
It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views
that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he
foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing
his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive
from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes
about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be
decided very shortly.
Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother
Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much
of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his
spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind,
affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has
realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But
together with this mental change he has grown physically much
weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him
and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended
long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he
is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the
young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it.
The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the
gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only
his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to
Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about- I mean the
report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think
my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is
why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he
has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for
him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a
stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the
kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would
choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am
running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,
my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My
dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.
MARY
BK6|CH26
CHAPTER XXVI
In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected
letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her
strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to
Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his
betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He
wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he
understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive
him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited
Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not
done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his
consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his
displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the
matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then
insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that
period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the
doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia,
but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know
me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have
been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and
arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a
short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him
about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand
him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and
whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four
months."
After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave
the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her
quietly:
"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't
be long- I shall soon set him free."
The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her
speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:
"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,
eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell
him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little
Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He
mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more
women are wanted in my house- let him marry and live by himself.
Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to
Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the
frost... the frost!
After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the
matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior
found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former
pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added- allusions to stepmothers
and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.
"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a
splendid princess!"
And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary
noticed that her father was really associating more and more with
the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his
letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to
the idea.
Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and
religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that,
since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the
profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that
supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream
and hope were given her by God's folk- the half-witted and other
pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer
she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the
greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek
enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling,
and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,
sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that
was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman.
Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and
wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and
tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls,
for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not
only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came
down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is
a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.
"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No
one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me
by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear
of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave
family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without
clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place
under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-
for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:
higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"
There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty
called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot
and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her.
Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia
was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found
the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force
that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone
to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last
made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a
pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor,
Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise
of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's
complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough
coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers
containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain
whether the time had not already come to put her project into
execution.
Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by
their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep
meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning
everything and running away from home. In imagination she already
pictured herself by Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags,
walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road,
directing her wanderings from one saint's shrine to another, free from
envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where
there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.
"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to
get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on
till my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at
last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow
nor sighing..." thought Princess Mary.
But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko
(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that
she was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.
BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11
CHAPTER I
The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor- idleness- was a
condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man
has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race
not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our
brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both
idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we
are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though
idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the
conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of
obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class-
the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted
and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full
when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment,
in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from
Denisov.
Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow
acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked
and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was
well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters
from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their
affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it
was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.
Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to
take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the
entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt
that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,
with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its
accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society,
and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully
difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold,
formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending:
"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In
1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of
Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in
a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter
grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that
Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family,
should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of
view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow
Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after
all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission
from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should
not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married,
but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and
about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.
But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his
mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter
persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take
matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and
they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and
trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody
took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For
God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make
me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.
This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a
matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.
The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any
rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but
after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely
vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and
when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka
(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who
turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was
going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he
would go away without having heard from the staff- and this interested
him extremely- whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive
the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to
think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the
Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had
betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it
seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish
Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had
given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would
take place without him- he knew he must go away from this good, bright
world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week
later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades- not only those of
his own regiment, but the whole brigade- gave Rostov a dinner to which
the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were
two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with
Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped
Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted
"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as
far as the first post station.
During the first half of the journey- from Kremenchug to Kiev- all
Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with
the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to
forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to
wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would
find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached
it- far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law
by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the
square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he
gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran
breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.
After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of
unsatisfied expectation- the feeling that "everything is just the
same, so why did I hurry?"- Nicholas began to settle down in his old
home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little
older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional
discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found
out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly
twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more
than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and
love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable
love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha
surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen,
merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking.
As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed
whenever he looked at her.
"You're not the same at all," he said.
"How? Am I uglier?"
"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to
her.
"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.
She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit
to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.
"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy
now."
"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And
are you very much in love?"
"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris,
with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel
at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and
I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before."
Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the
marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with
exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and
that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's
will, and that she herself wished it so.
"You don't at all understand," she said.
Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.
Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem
at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.
She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This
amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship
skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially
as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him
that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.
"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had
touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his
surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her
soul she too had doubts about this marriage.
"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince
Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a
daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come
before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His
health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach
importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through
the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every
time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that
everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He
is an excellent man!"
BK7|CH2
CHAPTER II
After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull.
He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid
business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw
off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his
arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as
to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of
everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew
even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation
and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long.
The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were
waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young
count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and
then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.
"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm
not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.
Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red
in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff
of the neck and applied his foot and knee to him behind with great
agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off!
Never let me see your face here again, you villain!"
Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the
shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for
culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the
town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe,
hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)
Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and
frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar
was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its
patchwork quilt.
The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by
with resolute strides and went into the house.
The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened
at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would
certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect
this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his
door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.
Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed
smile, said to him:
"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has
told me all about it."
"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything
in this crazy world."
"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they
were carried forward- and you did not look at the other page."
"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have
done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."
"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he
had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his
children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to
attend to the business. I am old. I..."
"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I
understand it all less than you do."
"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings
forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a
'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to
another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after
that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess
called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from
Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he
thought of doing with it.
"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I
don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were
our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and
by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After
that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but
devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new
pursuit- the chase- for which his father kept a large establishment.
BK7|CH3
CHAPTER III
The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts
congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had
thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the
brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and
against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded
ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been
green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and
bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already
half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to
scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best
time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but
were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give
them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go
on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was
an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.
All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the
air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began
to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,
looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for
hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth
without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,
microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the
garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly
fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black
and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into
the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy
porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a
black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got
up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a
hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and
mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the
garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch
with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.
"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call
which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round
the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,
wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian
fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence
and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his
Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This
scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,
disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all
the same his serf and huntsman.
"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the
weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away
by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all
his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his
mistress.
"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep
bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing- and two
flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who
was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.
"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked
Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.
Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.
"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a
minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.
They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom
they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small
place a mile and a half from the house.)
"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me
with Uvarka."
"As you please."
"Then put off feeding them."
"Yes, sir."
Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'
big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was
like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and
surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual
stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for
fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he
hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that
ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.
Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion
that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),
Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was
about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her
hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped
round her. Petya ran in at the same time.
"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you
wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you
couldn't help going."
"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as
he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and
Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for
you."
"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;
you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said
nothing to us about it."
"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'- we'll go!" shouted Petya.
"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.
"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively.
"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my
dogs," she added to the huntsman.
It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but
to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.
He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his
business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on
the young lady.
BK7|CH4
CHAPTER IV
The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting
establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's
care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September,
prepared to go out with the others.
In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch.
Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no
time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were
trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of
the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the
quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of
borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the
Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called
Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the
count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved
for him.
They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and
whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and
more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash
belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and
thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.
Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his
business. his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the
fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,
along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.
The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and
then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky
still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the
air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a
huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a
straggling hound could be heard.
When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders
with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In
front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray
mustache.
"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.
"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was
a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their
neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good
thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite
expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins
are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll
take the cubs from under your very nose."
"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked
Nicholas.
The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas
rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide
her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed
by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and
by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing,
whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on
her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.
"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not
like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.
"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.
"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds,"
said "Uncle" sternly.
"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,
referring to her favorite hound.
"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought
Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel
the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha
understood it.
"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said.
"We'll go to our places and won't budge."
"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you
don't fall off your horse," he added, "because- that's it, come on!-
you've nothing to hold on to."
The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards
off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally
settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having
shown Natasha where she was to stand- a spot where nothing could
possibly run out- went round above the ravine.
"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and
don't let her slip!"
"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he
shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi.
Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having
tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.
The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as
not to be late, and the hunstmen had not yet reached their places when
Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove
up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for
him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and
fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,
well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,
like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,
though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,
and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged
his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was
ready, looked about with a smile.
Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old
horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three
formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master
and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred
paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's
other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the
hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled
brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his
favorite Bordeaux.
He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were
rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his
saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out
for an outing.
The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready,
kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of
terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in
expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through
the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind
the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's
cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who
went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.
"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him.
"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"
"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.
"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen
the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"
"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered
Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."
"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the
count. "She's as good as many a man!"
"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"
"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"
"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so
well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well
knowing what would please his master.
"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"
"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the
Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight
when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand
rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search
far to find another as smart."
"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not
said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his
coat to get at his snuffbox.
"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael
Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had
distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three
hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a
warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs...
" he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."
The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked
into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space,
holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry
of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's
hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be
heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that
indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on
the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others
rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice
seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open
field.
After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his
attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into
two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue,
began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood
past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard
calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart
again, but both were becoming more distant.
Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi
had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in
his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a
borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and
dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.
The count and Simon were looking at him.
Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly
approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were
just in front of them.
The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes
starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to
the other side.
"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had
long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he
galloped toward the count.
The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a
wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet
lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.
The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the
horses' feet at the wolf.
The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs
awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly
swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish
of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same
instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and
then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the
whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf
had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and
Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back
sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging
over his flushed, perspiring face.
"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the
count his eyes flashed lightning.
"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the
count.
"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen! and as if scorning to
say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving
flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count
had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a
punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's
sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was
galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both
sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood
before they could do so.
BK7|CH5
CHAPTER V
Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the
wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of
the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of
the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was
happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were
there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere
a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He
expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of
different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would
come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair.
Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come
his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with
which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial
causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to
God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee,
but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay
spring at it- in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there- and
seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during
that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of
the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth
and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just
visible above the bush on his right.
"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it
be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am
always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed
rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get
an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears
and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the
slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.
Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him
across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a
deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped
for. The height of happiness was reached- and so simply, without
warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his
eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and
jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old
animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without
hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his
breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing
the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head
and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and
snapping at his hind legs.
"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped
up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay
finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up
with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.
"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf
approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole
physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never
seen before- human eyes fixed upon her- and turning her head a
little toward Rostov, she paused.
"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to
say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round
and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.
"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own
accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies
to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.
Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping,
nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only
the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same
direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,
with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the
wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf
turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she
usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.
"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.
The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang
impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but
immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her
teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of
a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to
her.
"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still
shouting with a hoarse voice.
"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi
who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left
him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf,
galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the
wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay
had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of
him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach
it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping
almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish
young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed
impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But
the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,
gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a
piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a
gash in its side.
"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.
Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path,
the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within
five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her
eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and
increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something
happened to Karay- the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they
rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.
That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully
with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and
outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears
laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest
moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to
dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up
from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge
of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the
throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and
having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again,
went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or
wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully.
"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.
"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the
wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance.
She was again hemmed in.
Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were
all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to
dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward
again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she
would be safe.
Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the
ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,
and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he
saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself
and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf
but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the
animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just
when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.
Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand
and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip
as if it were a flail.
Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,
breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body
and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to
seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to
the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed
back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her.
Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if
lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears.
Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll
gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck.
A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash,
as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her
over once or twice from side to side.
With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a
shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her,
took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had
killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled
with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the
wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten
stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd
of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked
her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count
Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf.
"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he
asked Daniel, who was standing near.
"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.
The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with
Daniel.
"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.
For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable
smile.
BK7|CH6
CHAPTER VI
The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return
very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At
midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with
young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his
whips.
Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood
alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been
loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at
intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving
tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a
fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along
the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.
He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the
ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself
at any moment on the ryefield opposite.
The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,
and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going
hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew
close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and
sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white
borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in
confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying
their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the
group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the
other, a stranger, in a green coat.
"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He
is not 'Uncle's' man."
The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without
strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high
saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The
huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that
spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of
a fight.
"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said
Nicholas' groom.
Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode
at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds
together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight
was going on.
Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden
up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would
end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and
rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.
While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak
respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry.
One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.
"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my
gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the
fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want
a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and
probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and
Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,
Ilagin's, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,
surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel
and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the
Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very
woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs
had chased.
Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of
moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his
arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe.
He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and
fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish
his enemy.
Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman
in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black
horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.
Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and
courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young
count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised
his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and
would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox
hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted
with the count and invited him to draw his covert.
Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had
followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging
friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver
cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that
the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as
well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.
To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to
come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for
himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and
the hunt, now doubled, moved on.
The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt
servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov,
and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying
not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for
rivals to their own borzois.
Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,
pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with
muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He
had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that
beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.
In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the
year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.
"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she
swift?"
"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered
Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year
before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So
in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he
went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering
it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his
borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her
breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine- well shaped!"
said he.
"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only
a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort
of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a
ruble to anyone who found a hare.
"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be
so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I
enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he
again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what
one takes, I don't care about that."
"Of course not!"
"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches
something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not
so, Count? For I consider that..."
"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,
who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip
aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and
the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we
must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing
in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a
chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo
my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin
toward the hare.
"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had
sighted the hare- and not without agitation he looked round and
whistled to Erza.
"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your
borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours
against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"
"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily
by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on
this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly
men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by
it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and
the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were
far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but
not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and
sedately.
"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces
toward the whip who had sighted the hare.
But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming
next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash
rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the
borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.
All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling
in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!"galloped
across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,
Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they
went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose
sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started
was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at
once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling
that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not
very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having
chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and
rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of
him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois
of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the
first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's
red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare
with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had
seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and
bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the
broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the
hare.
"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if
Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and
flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached
him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the
distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind
leg.
"Erza, darling! Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did
not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have
seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between
the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast,
running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the
hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the
borzois did not overtake him so quickly.
"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just
then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught
up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of
the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off
the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,
sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was
how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of
borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the
crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a
pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously
glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He
spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it,
come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the
thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come
on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were
abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him,
and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There
are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..."
"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's
muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"
"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of
whether he were heard or not.
"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's
groom.
"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take
it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop
and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing
breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set
everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the
others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that
she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone
else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself
twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's
back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with
an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode
off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much
later were they able to regain their former affectation of
indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who,
his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,
walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a
conqueror.
"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of
coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seem to
Nicholas to be saying.
When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to
him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle"
deigned to speak to him.
BK7|CH7
CHAPTER VII
Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they
were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the
hunting party should spend the night in his little village of
Mikhaylovna.
"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,
come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could
rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."
"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for
a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.
Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the
front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and
young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to
have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha-
a woman, a lady, and on horseback- raised the curiosity of the serfs
to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the
face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though
she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or
understand what was said about her.
"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt
dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"
"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."
"Isn't she a Tartar!"
"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,
addressing Natasha directly.
"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which
stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his
retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should
take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made
to receive the guests and the visitors.
The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and
taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch.
The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean- it
did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless- but
neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of
fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.
"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with
a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a
round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room
where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of
Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military
uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked
his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went
out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and
lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth.
Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with
ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's
laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their
wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell
asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces
glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another
(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no
longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over
his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long
from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a
pretext ready to account for it.
After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and
small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one
she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the
right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.
"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the
brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that
they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the
merriment.
"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw
anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem
and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another
that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as
fresh as ever!
Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently
from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking
woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered
carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality
in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and,
with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional
stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and
throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod
very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her
plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors
d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had
finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on
her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her
expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not
only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered
brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips
when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb
wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with
buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,
apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards
she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey,
and preserves made with sugar.
All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping,
gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a
smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness,
cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.
"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered
Natasha first one thing and then another.
Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten
such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets,
or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.
After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of
past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat
upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried
several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only
muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so
lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only
feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,
such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in
one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his
visitors' mind, said:
"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.
That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"
"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said
this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about
him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province
"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and
disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,
chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a
justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused
public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on
his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown
garden in summer.
"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"
"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come
on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't
brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter- that's it, come on!
Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"
The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as
they called the room for the hunt servants.
There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the
door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a
balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was
playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and
now went out into the passage to hear better.
"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka.
I'm fond of it," said "Uncle."
It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the
huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond
of such music.
"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some
unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the
sounds pleased him very much.
"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's
tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"
Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had
seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that
moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.
"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the
balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the
balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"
sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air
was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several
times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did
not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya
Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.
"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely
like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.
"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an
energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out- that's it, come on!-
ought to burst out."
"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.
"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.
"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I
haven't touched it for a long time. That's it- come on! I've given
it up."
Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her
errand and brought back the guitar.
Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping
the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself
in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,
arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a
wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,
and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow
time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the
street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to
thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the
same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole
being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her
face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play
correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a
changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had
just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of
his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker
and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers
over the strings, something seemed to snap.
"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he
had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,
Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What
is it moves me so?"
Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"
played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face
reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...
Fetching water clear and sweet,
Stop, dear maiden, I entreat-
played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the
strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.
"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her
life depended on it.
"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of
them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow
struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.
"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had
just struck a chord.
Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to
face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with
her shoulders and struck an attitude.
Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree
French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that
spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale* would, one
would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the
movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that
"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and
smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that
had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do
the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.
*The French shawl dance.
She did the right thing with such precision, such complete
precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the
handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though
she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in
silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to
understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother
and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.
"Well, little countess; that's it- come on!" cried "Uncle," with a
joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine
young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it- come on!"
"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.
"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha,
who nodded her head with a happy smile.
"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new
train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile
mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is
as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our
gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought,
and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.
"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down
again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.
"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he
cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:
As 'twas growing dark last night
Fell the snow so soft and light...
"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that
the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune
comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which
exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the
unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily
good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to
give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked
"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.
After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been
sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count
and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious,
said one of the men.
Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two
traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped
Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness.
He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be
crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent
huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.
"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness- not the
voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas
growing dark last night.
In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a
cheerful smell of smoke.
"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto
the highroad.
"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"
"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered
Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long
while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but
only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.
What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly
caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did
they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were
nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark
last night- the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get
and had at last caught.
"Got it?" said Nicholas.
"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.
They were fond of asking one another that question.
"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I
thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were
a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then
for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?...
Well, and you?"
"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving
along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows
where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive
and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And
then I thought... No, nothing else."
"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as
Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.
"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about
Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would
have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How
well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her
spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she
suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and
tranquil as I am now."
"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:
"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her
and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive
about together!
"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.
"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said,
pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the
moist velvety darkness of the night.
BK7|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the
Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his
affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their
parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard
suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near
Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the
count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in
former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of
people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were
all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as
members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live
in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,
Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,
an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the
girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it
preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than
at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits
of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of
existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting
establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty
horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive
presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;
there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-
spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them- he let
himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,
who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a
most profitable source of income.
The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to
believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every
step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work
carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her
loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was
not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was- that
(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the
consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to
find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of
view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry
a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if
Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to
abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with
Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl
the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy
heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.
The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow
suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a
favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part
she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's
inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.
Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son
that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him
married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that
were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid
girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.
At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to
Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his
mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations
induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of
getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie
Karagina.
"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you
expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of
money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question
and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.
"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how
to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your
happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an
untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.
"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I
will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I
would sacrifice anything for you- even my feelings."
But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did
not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a
sacrifice for him.
"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she
replied, wiping away her tears.
"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he
thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should
certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can
always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to
himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that
feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."
Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and
sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment
between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself
for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,
often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my
dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in
speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with
Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,
so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,
unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were
no grounds for finding fault with her.
Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter
had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he
would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound
unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to
defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still
as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that
love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures
of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their
separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not
master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted
all this time and of no use to anyone- while she felt herself so
capable of loving and being loved.
Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.
BK7|CH9
CHAPTER IX
Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and
the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,
though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine
by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some
special celebration of the season.
On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the
inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest
time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that
morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was
resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round
table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing
patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the
window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to
Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother
and stood without speaking.
"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother.
"What do you want?"
"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha,
with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.
The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.
"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."
"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.
"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"
Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned
quickly to hide them and left the room.
She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and
then went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling
at a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold
from the serfs' quarters.
"Stop playing- there's a time for everything," said the old woman.
"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."
Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went
to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing
cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.
"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.
"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the
yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some
oats."
"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.
"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.
"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."
On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a
samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.
Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.
Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order
and asked whether the samovar was really wanted.
"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at
Natasha.
No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble
as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to
send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of
them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no
one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can
I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.
"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked
the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.
"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.
"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am
I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly
upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.
Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which
were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were
discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha
sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air,
and then got up again.
"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,
articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame
Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.
Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on
him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.
"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."
Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her
arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.
"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off
his back she went downstairs.
Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made
sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was
dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,
sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her
fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she
recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.
What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other
listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences
arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes
fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and
listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on
the past.
Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced
at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her
that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before
and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the
same," thought Natasha.
"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.
"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and
listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of
being wrong.
"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling
timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in
just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."
"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha
sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where
were you going?" she asked.
"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."
"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And
where's Nicholas?"
"Asleep, I think."
"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come
and sing."
She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened
before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all
regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time
when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.
"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!
And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't
then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will
come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing
room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose,
put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.
All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were
already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table- but
Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.
"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.
"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced
round as if looking for something.
"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,
quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between
the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my
God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing
in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of
repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they
were always the same.
After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to
their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
BK7|CH10
CHAPTER X
Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when
they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you
to feel as if there were nothing more to come- nothing; that
everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"
"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when
everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has
come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must
all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where
there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."
"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I
was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I
was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat
sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and
sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was
innocent- that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"
"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you
afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt
ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and
wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?"
"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how
once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us
into the study- that was in the old house- and it was dark- we went in
and suddenly there stood..."
"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course
I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or
if we only dreamed it or were told about him."
"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and
looked at us..."
"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.
"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.
"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said
Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you
remember!"
"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."
"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."
"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,
and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was
that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"
"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun
in the porch?"
So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not
the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones- those
impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities
blend- and they laughed with quiet enjoyment.
Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they
shared the same reminiscences.
Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she
recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.
She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.
She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first
arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because
he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too,
would be sewn up with cords.
"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a
cabbage," said Natasha, and I remember that I dared not disbelieve
it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."
While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other
door of the sitting room.
"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.
"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied
Natasha.
In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and
went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its
cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.
"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the
old countess' voice from the drawing room.
Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,
remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"
"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a
moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now
discussing dreams.
Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the
table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself
quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially
where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the
silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished
the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings,
evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.
"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to
Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling
memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one
was in the world..."
"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well,
and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have
lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."
"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still
in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we
were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we
remember...."
"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat
down by them.
"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas.
"No, that can't be!"
"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was
before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal- well
then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a
whole eternity."
"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked
Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending
smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.
"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now
today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday,
and the day before..."
"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the
countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"
"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same
she rose.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break
off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but
Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as
usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the
resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had
sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The
count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her
and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in
his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped,
while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.
Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in
time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense
difference there was between herself and her friend, and how
impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her
cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with
tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of
Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural
and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew.
Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with
closed eyes.
"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she
has nothing to learn- what softness, tenderness, and strength...."
"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess,
not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her
that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she
would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing,
fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some
mummers had arrived.
Natasha stopped abruptly.
"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair,
threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop
for a long time.
"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled
me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs
still choked her.
The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,
innkeepers, and ladies- frightening and funny- bringing in with them
the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first
timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed
into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily
and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas
games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their
costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,
smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had
disappeared.
Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the
ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt- this was Nicholas. A Turkish
girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a
Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.
After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from
those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided
that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown
elsewhere.
Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to
take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them
about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."
"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you
wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the
Melyukovs'"
Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and
governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.
"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly
aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette
open her eyes."
But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad
leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go,
but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the
young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and
shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.
Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows
were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very
handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with
her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be
decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.
Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka
sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and
whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.
Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing
from one to another, grew stronger and stronger and reached its climax
when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,
talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.
Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was
the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the
fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.
Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his
hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.
It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the
metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked
round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.
Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas'
sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the
rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,
wishing for a chance to race past him.
The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,
squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its
deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts
of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered
like sugar, and threw it up.
Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the
others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove
at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the
garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and
hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the
fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out
before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish
shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the
snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same
way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas
began to speed along the road, one after the other.
"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice
through the frost-bound air.
"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.
Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face
closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches
peeped up at him from her sable furs- so close and yet so distant-
in the moonlight.
"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and
smiled.
"What is it, Nicholas?"
"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.
When they came out onto the beaten highroad- polished by sleigh
runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were
visible in the moonlight- the horses began to tug at the reins of
their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse,
arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his
traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as
if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead
the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black
horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white
snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices
of the mummers.
"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one
side and flourishing the whip.
It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given
by the side horses who pulled harder- ever increasing their gallop-
that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back.
With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft
horses to gallop- the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung
steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of
slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.
Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and
coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.
"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But
no- this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy
meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is
something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting
to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.
Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already
covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.
Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his
arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.
"Now, look out, master!" he cried.
Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the
feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.
Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with
the reins.
"No you won't, master!" he shouted.
Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The
horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh-
beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused
glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they
were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the
voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides.
Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were
still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled
with stars.
"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the
left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this
Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows
what is happening to us- but it is very strange and pleasant
whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh.
"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the
strange, pretty, unfamiliar people- the one with fine eyebrows and
mustache.
"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was
Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the
mustache I don't know, but I love her."
"Aren't you cold?" he asked.
They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh
behind shouted something- probably something funny- but they could not
make out what he said.
"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.
"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a
glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver
roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And
if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove
heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.
It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces
came running, out to the porch carrying candles.
"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.
"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some
voices.
BK7|CH11
CHAPTER XI
Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman
wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,
surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling
dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at
the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard
the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.
Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their
throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,
came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The
clown- Dimmler- and the lady- Nicholas- started a dance. Surrounded by
the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and
disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged
themselves about the room.
"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she
looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler- isn't
he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a
Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?
Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya- clear away the tables!
And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!
Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different
voices were saying.
Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into
the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male
garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish
arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young
Melyukovs joined the mummers.
Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the
visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,
went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles,
peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to
recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she
failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,
or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put
on.
"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face
of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one
of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve
in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she
ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden
by his law."
Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by
the dancers, who- having decided once for all that being disguised, no
one would recognize them- were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna
hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook
with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.
"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.
After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna
made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a
string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games
together.
In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The
corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,
flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the
mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly
how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for
having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in
the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the
ballroom.
"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!"
said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.
"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.
"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."
"I'll go," said Sonya.
"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov
girl.
"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a
cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After
sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh
drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in,
just in the shape of a man, like an officer- comes in and sits down to
table with her."
"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.
"Yes? And how... did he speak?"
"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began
persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow,
but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her
hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just
then..."
"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.
"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.
"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.
"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on
what you hear; hammering and knocking- that's bad; but a sound of
shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."
"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."
Pelageya Danilovna smiled.
"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"
"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.
"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"
"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.
Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game
or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at
her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today,
thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to
know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,
and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.
"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought
gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous
smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.
"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She
got up.
They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and
listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her
head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.
"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been
thinking of till now?"
Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went
hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of
people really had made the house stuffy.
Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but
even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow
sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the
sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary,
while the earth was gay.
"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought
Nicholas. and running out from the porch he went round the corner of
the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya
would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood
and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old
lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the
barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked
as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A
tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again
perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the
strength of eternal youth and gladness.
From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the
bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he
heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,
along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."
"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward
Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her
thin shoes.
Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of
paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas
she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress,
with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly
toward him.
"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her
face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the
cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and
kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt
cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little
hands pressed them to his cheeks.
"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and
then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back
porch.
BK7|CH12
CHAPTER XII
When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who
always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss
should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and
the maids.
On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing
and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's
face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former
and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted
again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new
Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the
sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast
and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling
sky, felt himself again in fairyland.
"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.
"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"
When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and
ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.
"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my
mind about Sonya?"
"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with
joy.
"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...
Natasha- are you glad?"
"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I
did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart
she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be
happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad!
Well, run back to her."
"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering
into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual,
and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before.
"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?"
"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."
"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should
long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,
and all would have been well."
"So you are glad and I have done right?"
"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.
Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing!
I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of
Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."
"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the
expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then
he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his
sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and
beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting
there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his
future happy and loving wife.
When they reached home and had told their mother how they had
spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their
bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork
mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They
talked of how they would live when they were married, how their
husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's
table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared
beforehand.
"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too
good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.
"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.
Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking
glasses, and sat down.
"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.
"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.
With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held
into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious
expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the
receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting
(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew,
in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was
to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin,
she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the
looking glasses.
"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down
now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I
feel so frightened!"
Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began
looking.
"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha;
"while you do nothing but laugh."
Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:
"I know she will. She saw something last year."
For about three minutes all were silent.
"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish...
suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her
eyes with her hand.
"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.
"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up
the looking glass.
Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to
get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not
wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to
sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped
her when she covered her eyes.
"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.
"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying,
not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.
"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who
can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.
"Yes, I saw him," she said.
"How? Standing or lying?"
"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying
down."
"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes
fixed on her friend.
"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he
turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really
seen what she described.
"Well, and then, Sonya?..."
"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and
red..."
"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how
afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha
began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into
bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,
gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.
BK7|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his
love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who
had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this
declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that
he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father
would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the
first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,
despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without
looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came,
tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's
presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of
vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to
admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied
that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and
evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the
countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always
conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family
fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry
an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he
was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had
not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could
have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and
his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the
family finances.
The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son
again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a
cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to
catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with
downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what
was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her
benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this
case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She
could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but
neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his
happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not
reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to
have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to
forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he
threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her
secretly.
The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her
before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying
without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she
would never receive that intriguer as her daughter.
Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told
his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his
feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time....
But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression
of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would
perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had
not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the
room from the door at which she had been listening.
"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I
tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.
"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she
said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a
rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and
excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.
"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,"
said Natasha.
Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which
she was aiming.
The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's
breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.
Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.
Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.
After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.
Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more
so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting
toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of
his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house
and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they
had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay
their departure from day to day.
Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her
betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and
impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would
have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no
advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the
most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived
only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new
places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his
letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from
giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial
obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the
possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part
of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him
formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no
importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess
corrected her mistakes in spelling.
There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince
Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending
the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.
So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya
and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.
BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
CHAPTER I
After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any
apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as
before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by
his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner
man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor- all the zest
of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and
the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost
at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a
brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important
personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service
with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre
unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company
of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal,
and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a
life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely
to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising
her went away to Moscow.
In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded
and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as
soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with
innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons,
the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh
drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who
desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days
leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,
and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In
Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing
gown.
Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received
Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready
awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest,
most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a
heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was
always empty because it was open to everyone.
Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent
societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees,
Freemasons, churches, and books- no one and nothing met with a refusal
from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large
sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have
given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the
Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa
after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking,
disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly
smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic
dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.
When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly
smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive
off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the
young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,
married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of
them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il
est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"* they said of him.
*"He is charming; he has no sex."
Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there
were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.
How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first
arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him
to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally
predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in
his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one
time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then
himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a
strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the
possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the
sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of
perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated
his serfs?
But instead of all that- here he was, the wealthy husband of an
unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and
drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the
government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal
favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile
himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow
gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before.
Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only
living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought
of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club
temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it
when not a single tooth or hair remained.
In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to
him that he was quite different and distinct from those other
retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were
empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position,
"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind.
But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and
sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were
brought by force of circumstances, society, and race- by that
elemental force against which man is powerless- to the condition I
am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living
some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond
of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied
himself.
Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust
with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such
acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.
"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself
in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to
reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by
experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste
to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the
Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.
"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is
one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded
by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay
homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he
was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the
Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal
marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise
to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June,
and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because
on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My
brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice
everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to
the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge
against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet
and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man
who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law
of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor
of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches- but
yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that
same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross
to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of
this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to
it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I
understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I
to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found
that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do,
and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I-
what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate
capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing
in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and
falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.
Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and
deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil
and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity.
Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be
under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned
himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented
every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in
building, and above all- read.
He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home,
while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book
and began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping
to gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and
women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking
became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the
doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for
him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having
poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he
felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his
fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea
without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did
he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously
had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always
conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his
head after dinner or supper he chatted or listened to conversation
or read. But under the influence of wine he said to himself: "It
doesn't matter. I'll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but
have no time now- I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on
never came.
In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions
appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily
picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he was glad.
Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when
entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try
hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To
Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life:
some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in
women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in
sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is
trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same- only to save
oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it,
that dreadful it!"
BK8|CH2
CHAPTER II
At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his
daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor
Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French
tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his
intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the
center of the Moscow opposition to the government.
The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of
senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent
events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which
he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of
this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of
respectful veneration- especially of an evening when he came in to tea
in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone,
told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and
scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned
house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered
footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past
century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who
were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable
spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of
hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two
hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the
house continued.
Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.
There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures- talks with
the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills- and
she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not
go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her
go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going
out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening
parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She
saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received
and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes
appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to
Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to
her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be
quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons
Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for
the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to
her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers
had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full
whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she
fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at
that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last
chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or
never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile
that she now had no one to write to, since Julie- whose presence
gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old
emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his
evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one
to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one
to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just
then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was
approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had
not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite
hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old
prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost
control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons
she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in
herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's
irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get
irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in
hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to
pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child- who was
already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry- that at
his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated,
raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in
the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to
cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her
example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner,
come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But
what distressed the princess most of all was her father's
irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late
amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the
ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,
it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but
this loving despot- the more cruel because he loved her and for that
reason tormented himself and her- knew how not merely to hurt and
humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to
blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that
tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his
ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at
the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had
occurred to him in jest- that if Andrew got married he himself would
marry Bourienne- had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had
persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend
her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his
dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of
Bourienne.
One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her
father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed
Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her
affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few
minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room
smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess
Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to
Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was
doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice
breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the
weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and
burst into sobs.
Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she
noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne
should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee
and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew
furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to
have him conscripted for the army.
"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is
the first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the
prince. "And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing
Princess Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her
as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this
house. Go! Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"
Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her
father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged
for her intervention.
At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in
her soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look
for his spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not
seeing them, or would forget something that had just occurred, or take
a false step with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had
noticed his feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no
visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his
napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and
feeble, and I dare to condemn him!" she thought at such moments,
with a feeling of revulsion against herself.
BK8|CH3
CHAPTER III
In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor- Metivier- who
had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome,
amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an
extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses
not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.
Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on
Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him
and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about
twice a week.
On December 6- St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day- all
Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit
no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom
he gave to Princess Mary.
Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered
it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,* as he
told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on
that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.
He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with
everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not
to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet
absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,
and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and
loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's
arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,
Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door
through which she could hear all that passed in the study.
*To force the guard.
At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then
both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung
open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the
terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his
dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils
of his eyes rolled downwards.
"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,
slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."
Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne
who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.
"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.
Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his
fingers to his lips he hastened away.
Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:
"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my
own house!"
After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in,
and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a
spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a
list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was
that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he
said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.
"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that,
understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the
room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation,
he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have
said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and
it will be carried out- we must part; so find some place for
yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence
of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself,
he shook his fists at her and screamed:
"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door,
sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.
At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.
These guests- the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with
his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of
the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy- awaited the prince
in the drawing room.
Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been
anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had
contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his
case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his
house.
The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable
society, but his little circle- though not much talked about in
town- was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.
Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in
his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and
Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:
"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince
Nicholas Bolkonski."
"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."
The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty
old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn
gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low
tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary
seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were
reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their
conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going,
now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political
gossip.
Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the
conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge
receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word,
showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The
tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of
what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related
evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to
worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker
always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his
criticism might touch the sovereign himself.
At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's
seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,
hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.
"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said
Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times
before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the
crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't
scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church- yet all keep
silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the
Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused,
feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was
impossible.
"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of
Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I
might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan
estates."
"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength
of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in
respectfully.
He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the
honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at
the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his
mind, evidently considering him too young.
"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was
surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in
the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.
Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not
understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the
Note.
"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so
long as its substance is forcible?"
"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should
be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.
Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording
of the Note.
"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,"
remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing-
not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a
whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!"
and he laughed unnaturally.
There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general
cleared his throat to draw attention.
"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The
figure cut by the new French ambassador."
"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His
Majesty's presence."
"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the
march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador
took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no
attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply.
At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to
address him."
All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it
was impossible to pass any judgment.
"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned
him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite
of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing
angrily at his daughter.
And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and
the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these
reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.
After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to
congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.
He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,
clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told
her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision
remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his
speaking of it to her now.
When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the
old men sat together.
Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the
impending war.
He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long
as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into
European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit.
"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political
interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only
thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will
never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"
"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can
we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our
youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our
Kingdom of Heaven."
He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.
"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you
turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a
Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their
knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies
three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing
woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked,
like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when
one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter
the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the
Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them."
All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile
and wagged his head approvingly.
"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin,
getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to
the prince.
"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of
hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and
offering his cheek to be kissed.
Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.
BK8|CH4
CHAPTER IV
Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and
faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only
wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile
attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions
and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who
was visiting them for the third time already.
Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to
Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of
the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and
they were left alone in the drawing room.
"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink
into an armchair beside her.
"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.
Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight
before him and smiled quietly.
"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.
"Who?"
"Drubetskoy."
"No, not long..."
"Do you like him?"
"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said
Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with
her father.
"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from
Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an
heiress."
"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.
"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages
matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I
can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay
siege to- you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive
to her."
"He visits them?"
"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said
Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good
humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his
diary.
"No," replied Princess Mary.
"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is
very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.
"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and
still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,
"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should
like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would
be a relief. He would give me advice."
"Would you marry him?"
"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!"
she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice.
"Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..."
she went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but
grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only
one thing left- to go away, but where could I go?"
"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"
But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst
into tears.
"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any
notice- forget what I have said!"
Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the
princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him;
but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said,
that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no
trouble except the one he knew of- that Prince Andrew's marriage
threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.
"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the
subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting
Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here."
"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring
to the old prince.
Princess Mary shook her head.
"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The
thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first
moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her.
You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me
honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you
think of her?- The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so
much doing this against his father's will that I should like to
know..."
An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and
repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on
the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that
he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what
he felt rather than what he thought.
"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing
without knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is;
I can't analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I
don't know. That is all one can say about her."
Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes,
that's what I expected and feared."
"Is she clever?" she asked.
Pierre considered.
"I think not," he said, "and yet- yes. She does not deign to be
clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."
Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.
"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."
"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.
Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her
future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to
accustom the old prince to her.
BK8|CH5
CHAPTER V
Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,
so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered
between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though
Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than
Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to
her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had
answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently
not listening to what he was saying.
Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a
manner peculiar to herself.
She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become
very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself
not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She
was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a
very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew
the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could
associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and
the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring
any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of
going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there,
for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go
boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a
sexless acquaintance.
That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and
hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner
parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day,
supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never
missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of
the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be
disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not
believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life,
and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who
has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost
the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of
the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had
even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life.
This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not
hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time
pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to
the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with
society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which
were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among
them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with
these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of
all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.
To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of
friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and
showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote:
"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.*
*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
Julia said this was charming
"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she
said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a
book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness
and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."
In reply Boris wrote these lines:
Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et mele une douceur secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*
*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris
read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the
reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large
gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who
understood one another in a world of indifferent people.
Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing
cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry
(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).
Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to
the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to
the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He
has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to
the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of
Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving
her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"- she paused. "And how
I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and
letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor
thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"
Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.
He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had
to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and
Nizhegorod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy
adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of
repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her
artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility
of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He
spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on
thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose
tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin
(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of
continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural
rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,
though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of
those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of
the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the
thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her
feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and
she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,
however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'
departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave
of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in
Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie,
suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive
to Kuragin.
"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable
source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him
married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for
her. What do you think of it, my dear?"
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that
whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing
all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally
apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another,
and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.
He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing.
Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had
enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though
Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore
meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine
inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how
their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them.
Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs
variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.
"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but
at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have
to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly
wasted his efforts- which was a thing he never allowed to happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes
to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and
said:
"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability
had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were
fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as
not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and
must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and
said:
"You know my feelings for you!"
There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and
self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on
such occasions- that he loved her and had never loved any other
woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and
Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she
demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom
and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house
in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant
wedding.
BK8|CH6
CHAPTER VI
At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha
and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it
was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in
Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been
heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the
countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya
Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality
on them.
Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya
Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya
Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter,
and her sons were all in the service.
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation- the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing
meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she
played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a
new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception
and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important
persons in the town.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the
pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the
Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles
hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall
doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might
have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately
turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful
instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and
their belongings.
"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the
left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the
samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,
drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by
the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she
shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half
frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she
added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her
slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.
When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things
and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna
kissed them all in due order.
"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was
high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old
man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his
aquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at
Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want
tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her
fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here
with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is
here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping
after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"- and she
pointed to the girls- "tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the
Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by
me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina
Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight- looked as if she had
put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without
some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked
the count sternly.
"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If
you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just
for a day, and leave my lassies with you."
"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in
Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet
them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and
favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.
Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian
shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so
afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at
a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the
whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the
room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.
"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.
You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known
him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the
ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now
listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's
marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a
child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family
against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.
You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use
your wits. Then all will be well."
Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but
really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her
love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human
affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince
Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and
take her. She wanted nothing more.
"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your
future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but
this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two
together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice
and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll
find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them.
Am I right or not? Won't that be best?"
"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.
BK8|CH7
CHAPTER VII
Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to
call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out
cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well
remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the
time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he
had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his
full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her
best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me,"
she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do
anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him- for being his
father- and of her- for being his sister- that there is no reason
for them not to like me..."
They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and
entered the vestibule.
"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest,
half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on
entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the
prince and princess were at home.
When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the
servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by
another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a
maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning
the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced
to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the
princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the
visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and
daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess'
room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in
patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly
trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess
Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed,
frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before
having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by
involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by
jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable
antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on
the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did
not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but
they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive
them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some
freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.
"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said
the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old
prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one
another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few
more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my
Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive
round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square,
and then I'll come back for her."
The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told
his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk
to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of
encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention
this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and
anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still
angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold
and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of
anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted,
and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he
departed.
Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary- who
wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha- Mademoiselle Bourienne
remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements
and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had
noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the
unnatural manner of the princess who- she thought- was making a
favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did
not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and
dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an
offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five
minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound
of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked
frightened.
The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white
nightcap, came in.
"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am
not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not
know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with
a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg
you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,
stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that
Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at
her father or at Natasha.
Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.
Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.
"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not
know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from
head to foot he went out.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this
apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition.
Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the
longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater
grew their antipathy to one another.
When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened
to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who
could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an
hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin
talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought
Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary.
She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been
unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and
because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of
the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess
Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with
a deep sigh:
"Wait, I must..."
Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.
"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am
glad my brother has found happiness...."
She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha
noticed this and guessed its reason.
"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,"
she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears
choking her.
"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she
was out of the room.
They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day.
She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing.
Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.
"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you?
It will all pass, Natasha."
"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."
"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should
you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.
Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed
her wet face against her.
"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-
"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he
come?..."
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew
how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how
upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the
count and the other guests.
BK8|CH8
CHAPTER VIII
That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya
Dmitrievna had taken a box.
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she
came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and
looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very
pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those
searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,
and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how
I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister
matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those
eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not
think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for
the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"
and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.
"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so
long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came
in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether
different. I can't!"
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words
of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside
her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in
love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into
the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the
theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,
holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped
by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and
the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the
first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
audible.
"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered
before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of
feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the
overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with
Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.
A sensation she had not experienced for a long time- that of
hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck- suddenly
affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole
crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count
Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted
general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's
engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in
the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who
was making one of the best matches in Russia.
Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the
country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly
pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and
beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her
black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the
box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in
time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"
said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"
"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked
the count.
"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!"
"The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once
that they're engaged...."
"Drubetskoy has proposed?"
"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the
Rostovs' box.
Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were
turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on
her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck- which
Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and
leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome
smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows
and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.
"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And
he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble
themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of
them."
Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and
with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their
box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which
Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly
remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.
"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,
better not think of it- not till he comes back!" she told herself, and
began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the
stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the
orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair
brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,
well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at
ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's
most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.
The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her
former adorer.
"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"
he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"
"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away
from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling
prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the
Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does
it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him,
they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov
and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."
A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed
plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string
of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk
dress and took a long time settling into her place.
Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and
pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the
pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time
the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and
smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the
count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.
"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll
call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls
with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used
to forget us. Is he here?"
"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively
at Natasha.
Count Rostov resumed his seat.
"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.
"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily
fall in love with."
Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the
conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in
the stalls, and the curtain rose.
As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent,
and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and
all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole
attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look
at it.
BK8|CH9
CHAPTER IX
The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides
was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a
cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls
in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk
dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of
green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had
finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box
and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding
a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his
arms about.
First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang,
then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man
fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to
start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater
began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage- who
represented lovers- began smiling, spreading out their arms, and
bowing.
After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood,
all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow
the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted
cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke,
and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was
all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and
unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused
at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them
the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but
they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and
expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has
to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the
rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women
in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who- apparently
quite unclothed- sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her
eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the
whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by
little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not
experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she
was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought,
the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through
her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box
and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to
touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then
to lean over to Helene and tickle her.
At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song,
a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box
creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's
Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the
newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an
exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a
self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom
she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was
now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot.
He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous
had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn
such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though
the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the
carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his
handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he
approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her
box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a
motion toward Natasha.
"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did
not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of
his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and
sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and
offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He
winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra
screen.
"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And
how handsome they both are!"
Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some
intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just
because he had said she was "charmante."
The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,
going out and coming in.
Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations
very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile
conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding,
and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and
congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she
had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,
everything seemed simple and natural.
The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and
Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.
Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most
distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another
in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.
During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in
front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha
knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even
turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its
most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre
appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their
arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since
Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing
anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at
and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew
animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.
When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to
her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a
man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it
was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed
straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that
it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be
so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.
In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there
was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were
raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep
notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black
cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began
waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging
away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue.
They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long
time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something
metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a
prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the
enthusiastic shouts of the audience.
During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she
saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,
staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her
and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.
When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to
the Rostovs' box- her whole bosom completely exposed- beckoned the old
count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had
entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.
"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The
whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"
Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so
pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with
pleasure.
"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it
you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"
Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a
fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think- especially
what was flattering- quite simply and naturally.
"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I
am not staying here long this time- nor are you- I will try to amuse
them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get
to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely
smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard
he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski,
Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis,
implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better
acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her
box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it.
The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many
candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on
the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a
queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang
something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had
been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and
stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something
mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely,
and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began
dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily
and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating
from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice,
returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking
one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and
shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the
stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly,
and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet
about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles
a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries
began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man
stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men
and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the
sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm
came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the
orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number
away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise
and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone
began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought
this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.
"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.
"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.
BK8|CH10
CHAPTER X
During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.
"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.
Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young
officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was
as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her
and told her he had long wished to have this happiness- ever since the
Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered
pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with
women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha
was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was
nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk,
but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and
good-natured.
Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.
"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as
an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume
tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We
shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said
he.
While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,
her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was
enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel
constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt
that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his
eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking
into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that
barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other
men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come
to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she
feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her
on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that
they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.
Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it
all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and
did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what
they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"
During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's
prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to
break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the
question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she
was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage
her.
"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn't that so? But now I like it very much
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to
her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the
prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as
a pledge!"
*Are the pretty women.
Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an
improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if
she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she
felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.
"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt
with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay.
Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive
to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her
now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous
thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country
did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote
past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his
arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he
disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act
that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of
this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were
leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage,
and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm
above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking
at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.
Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think
over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince
Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after
the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the
room.
"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"
She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to
realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to
understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark,
obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater
where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped
about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the
nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried
"bravo!"- there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear
and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.
"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this
gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.
Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all
she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple
views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at
such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by
herself.
"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.
Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.
"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to
repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why
isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some
instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing
had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew
had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole
conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and
tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.
BK8|CH11
CHAPTER XI
Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent
him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand
rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more,
which his creditors demanded from his father.
His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for
the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as
adjutant to the commander in chief- a post his father had procured for
him- and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to
him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.
Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's
house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him
after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and
gave him money under the guise of loans.
As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had
turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that
he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French
actresses- with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to
be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at
Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through,
outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the
best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies,
and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run
after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most
of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got
married two years before- a fact known only to his most intimate
friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish
landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole
had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to
send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off
as a bachelor.
Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with
others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was
impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had
never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of
considering how his actions might affect others or what the
consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was
convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so
God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year
and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so
firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did
not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he
borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.
He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning.
He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still
less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed
his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at
distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse
anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women,
and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in
these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the
gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly
considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad
people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.
Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence
similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope
of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all
will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."
Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and
his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling,
and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin
and made use of him for his own ends.
Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and
audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and
connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set,
made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting
the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole,
the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a
pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.
Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the
opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the
attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his
intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was
incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he
never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.
"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied
Dolokhov.
"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"
"You'd better wait till she's married...."
"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"
pursued Anatole.
"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said
Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"
"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a
good-humored laugh.
BK8|CH12
CHAPTER XII
The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came
to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something
which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking
about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and
offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice
that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he
had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her
first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now
added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess
Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not
understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would
never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She
could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she
had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the
recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater,
and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented
itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already
broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling
to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in
the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to
arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To
the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less
tranquil and happy than before.
On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at
her parish church- the Church of the Assumption built over the
graves of victims of the plague.
"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently
priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every
where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently
and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there
in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just
self-indulgence!"
Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her
whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the
servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church.
At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had
vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was
the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern
face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.
After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room
where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a
servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna
rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid
calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas
Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha.
After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited
on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having
shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied
herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice
without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head
to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room
the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's- a woman's-
that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off
the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a
purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with
good-humored amiable smiles.
"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.
"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said
she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in
Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George
will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if
you don't bring your lovely girls- who are prettier than
Mademoiselle George- I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I
would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!
Between eight and nine."
She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied
respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the
looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely.
She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually
praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised
them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"
which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one
like it.
"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.
A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as
if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess
Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and
important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt
almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.
Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to
give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha
together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The
idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.
Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha
for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her
own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs
she called her protegee aside.
"My brother dined with me yesterday- we nearly died of laughter-
he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly,
quite madly, in love with you, my dear."
Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.
"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You
must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a
reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your
fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to
death."
"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre- that
good Pierre- have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right."
And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now
seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind,
and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought
Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.
Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having
evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too
agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly.
In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all
right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of
Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening,
Marya Dmitrievna remarked:
"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise
you to; however, if you've promised- go. It will divert your
thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.
BK8|CH13
CHAPTER XIII
Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a
good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count
Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost
entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct.
Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room
surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among
them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an
intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or
let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle
George's performance was over.
Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.
Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and
followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same
feeling she had had at the opera- gratified vanity at his admiration
of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them.
Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of
her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George
went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people
began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a
chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,
who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down
behind her.
Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red
shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for
her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was
audible.
Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience
and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for
her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,
lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse
sounds, rolling her eyes.
"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.
Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor
understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt
herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world-
so remote from her old world- a world in which it was impossible to
know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat
Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened
sense of expectancy.
After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.
"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had
also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.
"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following
Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him.
"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never
ceased..."
"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and
Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil
her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked
Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand
and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the
ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when
they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha
lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident
tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,
whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.
"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"
she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I
am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."
Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and
the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to
remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt
his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her
father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that
Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love,
and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene
had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and
said in a tender voice:
"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never
see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he
brought his face close to hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she
saw nothing but them.
"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being
painfully pressed. "Natalie?"
"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she
felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her
dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then,
red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and
moved toward the door.
"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to
her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.
"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not
knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.
Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went
away without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was
tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or
Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew- she remembered distinctly
how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there
was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she.
"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I
was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the
first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could
not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one
too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible
questions.
BK8|CH14
CHAPTER XIV
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to
move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna
appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking
uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to
intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the
same as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat
down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.
"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is
my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince
Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to
begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had
to say!"
"Well, and he?" asked the count.
"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use
of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya
Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home
to Otradnoe... and wait there."
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.
"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your
betrothed comes here now- there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but
alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to
you."
Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its
reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better
to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the
wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.
"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took
her," said the old count.
"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But
if he won't- that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for
something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so
there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after
you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go,
with God's blessing!"
Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed
it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.
"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's
afraid you might think that she does not like you."
"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.
"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.
"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied
Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold
and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her
more intently and to frown.
"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is
true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room
to read Princess Mary's letter.
Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the
misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's
feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not
help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose
happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.
"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is
ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be
forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes
his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time
when she could see her again.
After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to
answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and
mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all
that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has
happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the
letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I
really? That's awful... and to escape from these dreadful thoughts she
went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess
Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it
be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that
went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its
former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She
vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of
happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and
at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of
yesterday's interview with Anatole.
"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in
complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I
have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only,"
she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it
from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is
spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's
love, in which I have lived so long?"
"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious
air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a
letter.
"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without
thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from
Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only
that it was a letter from him- from the man she loved. Yes, she
loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened?
And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand?
With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter
which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she
found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.
"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you
or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he
went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him- for
this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her- but that
if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power
could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her
away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.
"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for
the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each
word of it.
That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and
proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,
remained at home.
BK8|CH15
CHAPTER XV
On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and
to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open
on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up
and read it.
As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in
her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find
it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep
herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and
agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears.
"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she
have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go
to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What
will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is
the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before
yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that
she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it
was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a
thing!"
Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning
her face.
"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.
Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.
"Ah, you're back?"
And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment
of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of
embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.
"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.
"Yes," answered Sonya softly.
Natasha smiled rapturously.
"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you
any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he
writes... Sonya..."
Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.
"And Bolkonski?" she asked.
"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You
don't know what love is...."
"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"
Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not
grasp the question.
"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.
"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just
listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.
"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How
is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you
have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're
joking! In three days to forget everything and so..."
"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred
years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't
understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced
and kissed her.
"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it
too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as
before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his
slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave!
Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I
do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened
expression.
"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it
like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so
far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.
"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you
understand? I love him!"
"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,
bursting into tears.
"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"
declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be
separated...."
When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity
for her friend.
"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to
you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"
Natasha did not answer her questions.
"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me,"
Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such
matters! I have confided in you...."
"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked
Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince
Andrew gave you complete freedom- if it is really so; but I don't
believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can
be?"
Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question
presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know
how to answer it.
"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"
Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.
"If there were reasons..." she began.
But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.
"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you
understand?" she cried.
"Does he love you?"
"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her
friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you
have seen him."
"But if he is dishonorable?"
"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.
"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions
or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to
him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.
"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.
"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think
of your father and of Nicholas."
"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you
say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed
Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go,
for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily,
in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into
sobs and ran from the room.
Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote
that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all
the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their
misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the
magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her
she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her if she
had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife. At
that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.
On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on
Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his
estate near Moscow.
On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big
dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.
At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she
spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through
dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was
the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.
"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"
Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to
be praised. "We have had an explanation today."
"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're
not angry with me! Tell me everything- the whole truth. What did he
say?"
Natasha became thoughtful.
"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I
had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."
Sonya sighed sorrowfully.
"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.
"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why
do you think so badly of me?"
"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."
"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what
a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think
badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"
Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her.
The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face
became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.
"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I
haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him,
Natasha. Why this secrecy?"
"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.
"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"
"Afraid of what?"
"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely,
and was herself horrified at what she had said.
Anger again showed in Natasha's face.
"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not
your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me
alone, leave me alone! I hate you!"
Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.
"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran
out of the room.
Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the
same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the
house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once
abandoning them.
Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her
out of her sight.
The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha
sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting
something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past,
whom Sonya took to be Anatole.
Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed
that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and
unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she
did not finish, and laughed at everything.
After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly
waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at
the door learned that another letter had been delivered.
Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some
dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did
not let her in.
"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of
anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in
her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya
remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what
am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly
indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is
away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation?
But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince
Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she
really has already refused Bolkonski- she sent a letter to Princess
Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who
had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway,"
thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must
prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love
Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this
passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the
family be disgraced," thought she.
BK8|CH16
CHAPTER XVI
Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie
Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by
Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening
at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been
put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the
back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka
he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of
Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a
marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to
wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they
would hasten abroad with post horses.
Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand
rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand
borrowed with Dolokhov's help.
Two witnesses for the mock marriage- Khvostikov, a retired petty
official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and
Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an
unbounded affection for Kuragin- were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's
front room.
In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with
Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling
cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some
bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to
and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the
study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were
packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and
noting something down.
"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."
"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.
"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water
for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said
Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"
"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to
Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not
leave his face.
Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an
ironic smile:
"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"
"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only
knew... it's the devil knows what!"
"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously.
It's no joke, this plot you've hatched."
"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a
grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left
the room.
Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole
had gone out.
"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm
talking sense. Come here, come here!"
Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his
attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.
"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why
should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything
for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the
money? I did it all."
"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And
Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.
"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a
dangerous business, and if you think about it- a stupid business.
Well, you'll carry her off- all right! Will they let it stop at
that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll
have you in the criminal court...."
"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a
grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the
partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have
reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already
put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I
have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went
on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it
is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it.
Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't."
"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a
mess!"
"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the
room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of
Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?
Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.
"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in
French. "What?"
Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes
looked at him- evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of
him.
"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"
"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a
thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why
talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"
Anatole went into the back room.
"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the
servants.
Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to
bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went
into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.
Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and
smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to
himself.
"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from
the other room.
"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.
"Come! Balaga is here."
Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous
troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and
had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when
Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in
the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back
again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape
when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town
with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than
once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles
in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the
consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more
than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him,
and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira,
which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them
which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They
often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance
at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money
had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin
and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more
horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them;
liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a
driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through
the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind
him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He
liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead
than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!"
he considered them.
Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and
because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga
bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and
rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But
with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded
anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year- when he knew
from their valets that they had money in hand- he would turn up of a
morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.
The gentlemen always made him sit down.
"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he
would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go
to the fair."
And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a
thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.
Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about
twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck,
glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine,
dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.
On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the
front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a
small, black hand.
"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.
"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"
"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand
to Anatole who had just come in.
"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's
shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....
What horses have you come with? Eh?"
"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.
"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there
in three hours. Eh?"
"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.
"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,
suddenly rolling his eyes.
"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my
gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast
we'll go!"
"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."
"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.
"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."
"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large
glass of Madeira for him.
The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After
refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with
a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.
"And when are we to start, your excellency?"
"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,
Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"
"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be
there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven
hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?"
"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole,
smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed
rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka,
it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of
loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?"
"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd
harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went
on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those
animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew
numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins- 'Catch hold
yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom
of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them
on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils
took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."
BK8|CH17
CHAPTER XVII
Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later
wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily
set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having
looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he
had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.
"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!"
said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a
moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the
others.
Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to
make something touching and solemn out of this address to his
comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest
slightly swayed one leg.
"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my
youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when
shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time- now
farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying
his glass flung it on the floor.
"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and
wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.
"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!
"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.
Balaga was about to leave the room.
"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.
That's the way."
They shut the door and all sat down.
"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.
Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all
went out into the vestibule.
"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to
Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what
elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll
rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if
you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's
frozen in a minute and must go back- but you wrap the fur cloak
round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh."
The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.
"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he
shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.
A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black
eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a
sable mantle on her arm.
"Here, I don't grudge it- take it!" she said, evidently afraid of
her master and yet regretful of her cloak.
Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over
Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.
"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the
collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.
"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to
meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant
smile was seen.
"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my
revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,
Matrena, wish me luck!"
"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her
gypsy accent.
Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers
were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and
holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and
Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated
themselves in the other sleigh.
"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.
"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka
tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.
"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga
and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be
heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;
something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the
Arbat Street.
After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to
rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old
Konyusheny Street.
The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and
Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the
gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant
ran out.
"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out
directly," said she.
Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the
courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.
He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.
"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,
intercepting any retreat.
"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless
whisper.
"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."
"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"
Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and
was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With
a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when
Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,
and ran back with him to the troyka.
BK8|CH18
CHAPTER XVIII
Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made
her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she
read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.
"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."
Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but
tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the
yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but
not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them
up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the
abductors.
When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run
away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced
through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward
midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.
Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for
God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna
unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer....
"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only
sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath.
"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and
will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute
steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and
she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya
Dmitrievna had left her.
"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings
with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I
speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when
I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd
treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will
conceal it."
Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved
with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna
glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.
"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said
in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.
She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward
her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how
Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed,
her cheeks sunken.
"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,
wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious
effort and sinking down again into her former position.
"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie
still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't
tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your
father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"
Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.
"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"
"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.
"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of
this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he
challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"
"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who
asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and
looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.
"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry
again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to
the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing
girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't
have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a
scoundrel, a wretch- that's a fact!"
"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If
you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it?
Sonya, why?... Go away!"
And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which
people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned.
Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:
"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw
herself back on the sofa.
Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on
her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that
nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would
undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had
happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she
grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under
her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some
lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.
"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room
supposing Natasha to be asleep.
But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open
eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not
sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her
several times.
Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time
for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the
affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was
nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess
whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had
been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor,
but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that
morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she
sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and
hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was
evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would
write to her.
When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the
sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and
malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What
is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.
After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."
In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so
dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she
assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry.
Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had
happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's
distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya
Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during
his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything
disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his
own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to
assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only
dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the
country.
BK8|CH19
CHAPTER XIX
From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to
go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs
came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to
carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's
widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers
of her deceased husband's.
When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya
Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great
importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre
had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling
for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's
fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.
"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he
as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew
would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the
house.
On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.
"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head.
In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering
the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin
dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of
military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver
collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his
white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded
hair besprinkled with powdery snow.
"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees
nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so
he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give
to be like him!" he thought enviously.
In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with
his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.
When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the
window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at
him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.
"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.
"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I
lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"
And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,
Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew
without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was
Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and
with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in
order to be married secretly.
Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was
told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince
Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife- the same Natasha Rostova who
used to be so charming- should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole
who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in
love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre
could not conceive and could not imagine.
He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha,
whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her
baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all
alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man
unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied
Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded
pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with
contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him
in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that
Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation,
and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an
expression of calm dignity and severity.
"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna.
"He could not marry- he is married!"
"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna.
"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him- expecting
him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on
expecting him."
After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and
giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya
Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that
the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew
of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge
Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his
brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set
eyes on him again. Pierre- only now realizing the danger to the old
count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew- promised to do as she wished.
Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go
to the drawing room.
"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing
either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use
expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after
Pierre.
Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning
Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.
"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What
troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret
having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she
has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true
this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an
excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they
wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it
has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or
mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard,
Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...."
Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the
subject, but the count returned to his troubles.
Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.
"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to
see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."
"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to
send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it
all was!"
And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the
room.
When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha
did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by
Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the
corridor to Natasha's room.
Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and
her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look
the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed
fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or
like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he
evidently did not exist for her.
"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre
and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the
truth."
Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded
animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.
"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a
feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do,
"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you,
because..."
"Then it is not true that he's married!"
"Yes, it is true."
"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."
Pierre gave his word of honor.
"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes, I have just seen him."
She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands
that they should leave her alone.
BK8|CH20
CHAPTER XX
Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at
once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the
thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a
difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the
gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all
was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were
sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town
news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his
acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small
dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library,
but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's
acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if
he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of
in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was
nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone
about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another
that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm,
indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his
soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,
and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove
home.
Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with
Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate
affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he
drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting.
When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his
valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The
countess' drawing room was full of guests.
Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his
return- at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever-
entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.
"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You
don't know what a plight our Anatole..."
She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head,
in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of
that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced
after his duel with Dolokhov.
"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.
"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.
Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready
to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward
himself and was leading him from the room.
"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene,
but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.
Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face
betrayed anxiety.
Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed
Anatole without looking at him.
"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to
elope with her, is that so?"
"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in
French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to
me in that tone."
Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized
Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him
from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of
terror.
"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.
"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button
of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.
"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives
me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,
expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.
He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once
put it back in its place.
"Did you promise to marry her?"
"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."
Pierre interrupted him.
"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving
toward Anatole.
Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his
pocket and drew out his pocketbook.
Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table
that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.
"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a
frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as
if repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a
short pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you
must get out of Moscow."
"But how can I?..."
"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must
never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess
Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark
of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.
Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.
"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there
is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you
are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse
yourself with women like my wife- with them you are within your
rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against
you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to
marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is
as mean as beating an old man or a child?..."
Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with
a questioning look.
"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more
confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't
want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of
his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me- 'mean' and so
on- which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use."
Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he
wanted.
"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."
"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.
"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do
as you wish, eh?"
"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to
forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if
you require money for your journey..."
Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile,
which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.
"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.
Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.
BK8|CH21
CHAPTER XXI
Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of
her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole
house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill,
having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the
night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some
arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had
been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done.
The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was
now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the
question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent
for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a
tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.
Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip
about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these
rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his
brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to
Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and
re-establish Natasha's reputation.
He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day
to the old prince's for news of him.
Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from
Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which
Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits
than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.
Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from
Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come
to see him.
As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his
father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement
(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and
given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of
Natasha's elopement, with additions.
Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see
him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost
the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering
the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated
voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's
voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out
to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room
where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy
with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both
at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news
of Natasha's faithlessness.
"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not
let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far
better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."
"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.
Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not
understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the
study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health,
but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in
civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly
disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about
Speranski- the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had
just reached Moscow.
"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about
him a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were
unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and
to throw on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy,
but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this
reign it was done by him, by him alone."
He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and
immediately assumed a vindictive expression.
"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to
Pierre.
"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with
animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am
well," he said in answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.
To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is
now of no use to anyone."
After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish
frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre,
and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his
son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation
about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.
"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,
they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I
do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"
Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only
too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous
matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too
intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took
Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A
bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks
stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket,
from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently
and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his
lips compressed.
"Forgive me for troubling you..."
Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his
broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated
Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he
continued:
"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard
reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of
that kind. Is that true?"
"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew
interrupted him.
"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.
He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.
"Give this to the countess... if you see her."
"She is very ill," said Pierre.
"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince
Kuragin?" he added quickly.
"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."
"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled
like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.
"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his
hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.
"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.
Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his
father.
"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.
"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.
"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess
Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all
that is good."
Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember
whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre
would say anything, looked fixedly at him.
"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,
"about..."
"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman
should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."
"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.
Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her
hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very
noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you
wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well,
good-by. So you'll give her the packet?"
Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.
The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same
as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed
her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at
them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the
Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to
mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone
else.
At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was
becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with
his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an
unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.
BK8|CH22
CHAPTER XXII
That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the
commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the
Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya
Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken
the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.
"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.
"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not
been tidied up."
"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.
Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.
"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,
don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the
heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be
pitied."
Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated,
with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected
to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently
undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.
Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as
usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her
arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she
went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different
expression of face.
"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your
friend- is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that
everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once
to apply to you..."
Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then
he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he
now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for
reproach.
"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped
and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.
"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."
He did not know what to say.
Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think
she had meant.
"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never
be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only
that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."
She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.
A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.
"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said
Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...."
"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.
"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how
to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him- "did you love
that bad man?"
"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at
all...."
She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness,
and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his
spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.
"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his
gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.
"We won't speak of it, my dear- I'll tell him everything; but one
thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help,
advice, or simply to open your heart to someone- not now, but when
your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it.
"I shall be happy if it's in my power..."
Pierre grew confused.
"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed
Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.
He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it
he was amazed at his own words.
"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.
"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and
self-abasement.
"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,
cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this
moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"
For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and
tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.
Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom,
restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without
finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his
sleigh.
"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.
"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to
the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in
comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in
comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him
through her tears.
"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost
Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and
inhaled the air with joy.
It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the
black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky
did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane
things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been
raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark
starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,
above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all
sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to
the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the
enormous and brilliant comet of 18l2- the comet which was said to
portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre,
however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling
of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears,
at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with
inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly-
like an arrow piercing the earth- to remain fixed in a chosen spot,
vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white
light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre
that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own
softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.
BOOK NINE: 1812
CHAPTER I
From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating
of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces-
millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army-
moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which
since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth
of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian
frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to
human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated
against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries,
thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms,
and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of
all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them
did not at the time regard as being crimes.
What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes?
The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the
wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the
Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of
Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.
Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,
Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to
have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for
Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I
consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there
would have been no war.
We can understand that the matter seemed like that to
contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was
caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.
Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that
the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of
Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;
to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System
which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the
chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them
employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of
re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that
time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between
Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed
from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.
It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of
other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points
of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to
posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and
perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem
insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of
Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon
was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was
astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what
connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter
and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men
from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk
and Moscow and were killed by them.
To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried
away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event
with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes
present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes
the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of
causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by
its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its
impotence- apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident
causes- to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or
that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as
Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to
restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and
had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also
refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and
the war could not have occurred.
Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw
beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would
have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a
second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there
have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of
Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been
an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a
subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced
the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing
could have happened. So all these causes- myriads of causes- coincided
to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that
occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men,
renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to
east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes
of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.
The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event
seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier
who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This
could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and
Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried
out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without
any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was
necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power-
the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns- should
consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should
have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and
complex causes.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of
irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of
which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in
history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they
become to us.
Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal
aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain
from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that
action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and
belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined
significance.
There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life,
which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his
elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for
him.
Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious
instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of
humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in
time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic
significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more
people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the
more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every
action.
"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."
A king is history's slave.
History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind,
uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.
Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than
ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses
peuples*- as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him-
he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which
compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own
volition, to perform for the hive life- that is to say, for history-
whatever had to be performed.
*"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."
The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and
by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and
co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the
nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's
wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia- undertaken (as it
seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace,
the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his
people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,
and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining
advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors
he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the
opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to
attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides,
and millions and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to
the event that was happening or coincided with it.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of
its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it
is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes
it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions
in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the
botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue
decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under
the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and
prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon
went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander
desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill
weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for
the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great
men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but
the smallest connection with the event itself.
Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will,
is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole
course of history and predestined from eternity.
BK9|CH2
CHAPTER II
On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent
three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,
and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the
emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings
and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and
diamonds of his own- that is, which he had taken from other kings-
to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us,
tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise- who regarded him as her
husband, though he had left another wife in Paris- left her grieved by
the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the
diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and
worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon
himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere,
and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always
love and honor him- yet he set off to join his army, and at every
station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops
from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,
surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to
Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands
of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.
The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses
carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,* coming up
with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on
the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.
*Old style.
Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the
Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank
in order to select a place for the crossing.
Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the
wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of
Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the
Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched- Napoleon
unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic
considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to
cross the Niemen.
Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,
which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and
looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out
of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown
across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence,
were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in
an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of
his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive
l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of
the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and
on by the three bridges to the other side.
"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself,
things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So
these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au
revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au
revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!...
preur!- If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you
Minister of Kashmir- that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah!
hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks- those rascals- see how they run! Vive
l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see
you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the
veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and
young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces
of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the
long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the
gray coat who was standing on the hill.
On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse
was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one
of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant
and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because
it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of
him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him
everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares
that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across
one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply
to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by
enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with
delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On
reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of
Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.
"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and
pressing against one another to see him.
Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a
log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was
handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run
up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became
absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he
said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the
Polish Uhlans.
"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans
when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.
The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel
of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his
speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be
permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford.
In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on
a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the
Emperor's eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor
would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.
As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached
officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted
"Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse
and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse,
which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading
for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans
galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in
the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as
they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some
of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some
clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way
forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of
a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this
river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even
looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having
returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the
Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the
little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned
Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him
instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the
drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.
For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of
the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough
to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called
for his horse and rode to his quarters.
Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were
sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from
which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and
with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they
had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted
"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been
but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves
happy.
That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian
paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as
quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a
letter containing information about the orders to the French army
had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish
colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled
in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.
Quos vult perdere dementat.*
*Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.
BK9|CH3
CHAPTER III
The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than
a month. reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for
the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor
had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The
vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even
increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each
of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no
supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume
that responsibility himself.
The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody-
tired of waiting- prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who
surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend
his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.
In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by
the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the
Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be
given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly
received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected
money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to
the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a
landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the
fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner,
regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.
The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and
his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian
frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by
his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.
It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters
declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one
place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who
had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the
refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of
beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.
Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the
present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not
an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris
was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought
patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of
his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen
her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was
enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only
recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.
At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a
suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris.
They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling
bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze
gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware
of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased
to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not
dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now
another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.
As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev,
one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him
and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to
a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked
inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only
acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded
slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to
speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He
took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him,
unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both
sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when
the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the
Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped
forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him.
(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased
that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than
through himself.)
But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated
garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and
glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.
All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka,
he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and
how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he
had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to
choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the
veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the
garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the
veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris,
fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed
close to the doorpost with bowed head.
The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally
affronted, was finishing with these words:
"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as
long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to
Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was
satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but
displeased that Boris had overheard it.
"Let no one know of it! " the Emperor added with a frown.
Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his
eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and
remained there about another half-hour.
Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army
had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain
important personages that much that was concealed from others was
usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their
estimation.
The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was
particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations,
and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of
indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased
him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On
returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,
Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a
rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the
words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a
single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.
Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:
Monsieur mon frere,
Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my
engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian
frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in
which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression,
that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with
me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons
on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him
would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a
pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has
declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I
was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and
ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend
to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and
consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard
what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us
will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see
myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.
It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the
calamity of another war. I am, etc.,
(signed) Alexander
BK9|CH4
CHAPTER IV
At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having
sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him
to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When
dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he
would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on
Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.
Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because
with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use
them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made,
but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to
Napoleon.
Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied
by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts
at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn.
There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.
A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform
and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt.
Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the
road at a walking pace.
The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,
advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his
saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he
deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was.
The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about
regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.
After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after
conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in
general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the
service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to
encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application
of brute force to himself.
The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air
was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road
from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one
after another, like bubbles rising in water.
Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer
from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French
hussars looked silently at one another from time to time.
A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed,
came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse,
accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their
horses all looked smart and well kept.
It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full
trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of
martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit
of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.
The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was
polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past
his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to
be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied
immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.
They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French
hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and
stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the
other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the
division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev
and conduct him to his destination.
The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.
They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a
group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a
black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall
man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his
shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward
in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his
plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright
June sunshine.
Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the
bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was
galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when
Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of
Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though
it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he
was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore
assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so
sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of
his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with
his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"* he turned to
his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know
that I am leaving them tomorrow!"
*"Long live the king."
But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and
pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly,
after he had been ordered to return to military service- and
especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when
his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you
should reign in my way, but not in yours!"- he had cheerfully taken up
his familiar business, and- like a well-fed but not overfat horse that
feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts- he
dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and
gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without
himself knowing why or whither.
On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its
long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner,
and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully
informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not
pronounce.
"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the
difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make
your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly
condescension.
As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity
instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his
natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the
withers of Balashev's horse and said:
"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a
circumstance of which he was unable to judge.
"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does
not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the
words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation
unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a
novelty.
Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to
"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!* and he felt it
incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs
with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving
a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to
pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He
referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand
that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when
that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was
thereby offended.
*"Royalty has its obligations."
Balashev replied that there was nothing offensive in the demand,
because..." but Murat interrupted him.
"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he
asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.
Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of
the war.
"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my
heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and
that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as
possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain
good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters.
And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of
his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had
spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal
dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which
he had stood at his coronation. and, waving his right arm, said:
"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your
mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers,
and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were
respectfully awaiting him.
Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very
soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the
next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him
as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the
corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to
Marshal Davout.