War and Peace: Original Version
War and Peace: Original Version
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
An alternative version – the one Tolstoy originally intended, but has been hitherto unpublished – of Russia’s most famous novel; with a different ending, fewer digressions and an altered view of Napoleon – it’s time to look afresh at one of the world’s favourite books.‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece – a panoramic portrait of Russian society and its descent into the Napoleonic Wars which for over a century has inspired reverential devotion among its readers.This version is certain to provoke controversy and devotion in equal measures. A ‘first draft’ of the epic version known to all, it was completed in 1866 but never published. A closely guarded secret for a century and a half, the unveiling of the original version of ‘War and Peace’, with an ending different to that we all know, is of huge significance to students of Tolstoy. But it is also sure to prove fascinating to the general reader who will find it an invigorating and absorbing read. Free of the solemn philosophical wanderings, the drama and tragedy of this sweeping tale is reinforced. His characters remain central throughout, emphasising their own personal journeys, their loves and passions, their successes and failures and their own personal tragedies.500 pages shorter, this is historical fiction at its most vivid and vital, and readers will marvel anew at Tolstoy’s unique ability to conjure the lives and souls of Russia and the Russians in all their glory. For devotees who long for more, for those who struggled and didn’t quite make it to the end, or for those who have always wanted to know what all the fuss is about, this is essential reading.
War and Peace
Original Version
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Introduction by Nikolai Tolstoy
Contents
Cover (#u962b2934-ba4d-5975-95ef-b57b014a225d)
Title Page
Introduction
A Note on the Translation
Table of Russian Weights and Measures
List of Illustrations
Part I
I
“Eh bien, mon prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now…
II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room began filling up little by little.
III
Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was in full swing. On various sides…
IV
This new person was the young Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband…
V
Anna Pavlovna requested the vicomte to wait while she showed…
VI
The end of the vicomte’s story went as follows:
VII
“The entire nation will die for its Emperor, for the…
VIII
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soirée, the guests…
IX
Reaching the house first, Pierre, as if he lived there,…
X
A woman’s dress rustled in the next room. As if…
XI
The friends were silent. Neither said a word. Pierre kept…
XII
It was after one in the morning when Pierre left…
XIII
Prince Vasily kept the promise that he had made to…
XIV
Silence fell. The countess looked at her guest with a…
XV
Of the young people, aside from the countess’s elder daughter,…
XVI
When Natasha came out of the drawing room and started…
XVII
The countess felt so tired after the visits that she…
XVIII
In the drawing room the conversation was continuing.
XIX
“My dear Boris,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said to her son…
XX
Boris, thanks to his placid and reserved character, was never…
XXI
When Anna Mikhailovna and her son left to go to…
XXII
Countess Rostova and her daughter and an already large number…
XXIII
It was that moment before a formal dinner when the…
XXIV
Natasha was clearly unable to sit still. She pinched her…
XXV
The card tables had all been set up, parties sat…
XXVI
Meanwhile Natasha, running first into Sonya’s room and not finding…
XXVII
Natasha whispered to Nikolai that Vera had just upset Sonya…
XXVIII
While at the Rostovs’ house they were dancing the sixth…
XXIX
While these conversations were taking place in the reception room…
XXX
Pierre knew this large room, divided by columns and an…
XXXI
There was no longer anyone in the reception room apart…
XXXII
At Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky,…
XXXIII
Princess Marya went back to her room with the sad,…
XXXIV
The grey-haired valet was dozing in his chair, listening to…
XXXV
When the twenty minutes remaining until the time for the…
XXXVI
“Well now, Mikhail Ivanovich, our Buonaparte is having a hard…
XXXVII
Prince Andrei was leaving in the evening of the next…
Part II
I
In October 1805, Russian forces were occupying the villages and…
II
“He’s coming!” a signalman shouted at just that moment.
III
The regiment broke up into companies and set out for…
IV
On returning from the review, Kutuzov went through into his…
V
The Pavlograd Hussars Regiment was stationed two miles from Braunau.
VI
Kutuzov withdrew towards Vienna, destroying the bridges on the rivers…
VII
Two enemy shots had already flown over the bridge, and…
VIII
The remaining infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, funnelling in tightly…
IX
After crossing the bridge, one after another the two squadrons…
X
Pursued by a French army of a hundred thousand men…
XI
Prince Andrei went on to the house of the Russian…
XII
The following morning he woke late. Reviewing his impression of…
XIII
The Emperor Franz approached Prince Andrei, who was standing in…
XIV
That same night, having taken his leave of the war…
XV
On the 1st of November Kutuzov had received, via one…
XVI
Between three and four in the afternoon Prince Andrei, having…
XVII
“Eh bien,” Prince Andrei said to himself, “the Army of…
XVIII
Prince Andrei halted his horse at the battery, surveying the…
XIX
Prince Bagration, having ridden up to the very highest point…
XX
The attack by the Sixth Chasseurs made it possible for…
XXI
The infantry regiments, caught by surprise in the forest, were…
XXII
Tushin’s battery had been forgotten, and it was only at…
XXIII
The wind died down and black clouds hung low over…
XXIV
“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they…
Part III
I
Prince Vasily did not brood over his plans, any more…
II
After Pierre and Hélène’s wedding, the old prince Nikolai Andreevich…
III
The Rostovs had had no news about Nikolai for a…
IV
On the 12th of November Kutuzov’s active army, camped near…
V
The day after Boris’s meeting with Rostov, there was a…
VI
The day after the review Boris, dressed up in his…
VII
That very day there had been a council of war…
VIII
On the 15th of November the allied army advanced from…
IX
Before dawn the next day, Denisov’s squadron, in which Nikolai…
X
The following day the sovereign remained at Wischau. His physician-in-ordinary…
XI
After nine in the evening Weierother moved on with his…
XII
It was after one in the morning when Rostov, sent…
XIII
It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog extended…
XIV
The plan for the Battle of Austerlitz had been drawn…
XV
At the beginning of the battle Prince Bagration, reluctant to…
XVI
By five o’clock in the evening the battle had been…
XVII
Prince Andrei was lying on Pratzen Hill, still at the…
XVIII
At the beginning of 1806, Nikolai Rostov went home on…
XIX
The following day, the 3rd of March, after one o’clock…
XX
The following day at Sokolniki Pierre, as absent-minded as ever,…
XXI
Recently Pierre had only seen his wife at night or…
XXII
Two months had passed since Bleak Hills received news of…
XXIII
“Ma bonne amie,” the little princess said after breakfast on…
XXIV
The impression of the first war with Napoleon was still…
XXV
Despite the sovereign’s strict attitude to duellists at that time,…
XXVI
Two days after clarifying things with his wife, Pierre went…
XXVII
The matter between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and,…
XXVIII
In 1807 Pierre finally set off on a tour of…
XXIX
After his three-week sojourn in the country, concerning which he…
XXX
In 1807 life at Bleak Hills had changed little, except…
XXXI
Although the final debt of forty-two thousand, taken on to…
XXXII
The sovereign was in residence at Bartenstein. The army was…
XXXIII
Boris had found himself a position with the Emperor’s staff…
XXXXIV
After the Friedland disaster, Nikolai Rostov had been left as…
Part IV
I
No one mentioned “Buonaparte”, the Corsican upstart and Antichrist, any…
II
With the exception of a short visit to St. Petersburg,…
III
On arriving in St. Petersburg in 1809, Prince Andrei ordered…
IV
Prince Andrei was a novelty in St. Petersburg. His claim…
V
In the evening, after leaving the countess’s drawing room, Pierre…
VI
The Rostovs’ financial affairs had not been restored during the…
VII
Natasha, having lived in solitude in the country for the…
VIII
Prince Andrei arrived in St. Peterburg in August 1809. At…
IX
The day after his visit to Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrei…
X
There were many reasons that had led Pierre to this…
XI
On the 31st of December, the eve of the New…
XII
The following day Prince Andrei woke up and smiled, without…
XIII
For four days Prince Andrei did not go to the…
XIV
The morning after her bed-time discussion with her mother, when…
XV
Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and his daughter spent that winter…
Part V
I
The Biblical tradition has it that the absence of labour…
II
It was the 12th of September. There were already early…
III
About five male house serfs, both big and little, came…
IV
In the late autumn another letter was received from Prince…
V
The Yuletide season arrived. Besides the festive liturgy, at which…
VI
Natasha was the first to set the tone of Yuletide…
VII
The love between Prince Andrei and Natasha and their happiness…
VIII
At the beginning of winter, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and…
IX
In 1811 a French doctor acquired rapid fashionability in Moscow.
X
Pierre’s suppositions concerning Boris were correct. Boris could not make…
XI
The Rostovs arrived in early February. Natasha had never been…
XII
That evening the Rostovs went to the theatre. Natasha had…
XIII
In the year of 1811, life in Moscow was very…
XIV
The brightly lit drawing room at the Bezukhovs’ house was…
XV
After his first meeting with Natasha in Moscow, Pierre had…
Part VI
I
In the spring of 1812, Prince Andrei was in Turkey,…
II
The count was in despair. He wrote to send for…
III
“My brother sovereign!” Napoleon wrote in the spring of 1812…
IV
On the 11th of June at eleven o’clock in the…
V
The Russian Emperor and his court had already been living…
VI
As he despatched Balashov, the sovereign repeated yet again his…
VII
The gloomy soldier Davout was the complete opposite of Murat.
VIII
After Balashov had spent four days in solitude, boredom and…
IX
After his meeting with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrei went…
X
Prince Andrei reached army Central Headquarters on the 13th of…
XI
While Prince Andrei was living on the Drissa with nothing…
XII
Before the start of the campaign, when the regiment was…
XIII
More than a year had passed since Natasha had rejected…
XIV
As promised, Pierre came to dinner straight from Count Rostopchin’s…
XV
On the twelfth the sovereign arrived in Moscow and from…
Part VII
I
What had to happen was bound to happen. Just as…
II
After Prince Andrei’s departure, the old Prince Bolkonsky’s daughter observed…
III
Among the countless categories of all the phenomena of life,…
IV
While this was taking place in St. Petersburg, the French…
V
“The bird returned to its native fields” galloped to the…
VI
Between four and five in the evening that day, long…
VII
On taking command of the armies, Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrei…
VIII
On the 24th of August the French Emperor’s chamberlain, de…
IX
The Shevardino redoubt was attacked on the evening of the…
X
After the sovereign left Moscow, when that first moment of…
XI
On that clear evening of the 25th of August, Prince…
XII
At six o’clock it was light. It was a grey…
XIII
Prince Andrei was in the reserves, who had been firing…
XIV
After the Battle of Borodino, immediately after the battle, the…
XV
The following day Napoleon stood on Poklonnaya Hill and looked…
XVI
The two princesses (the third had married long ago) had…
XVII
In St. Petersburg, after the sovereign’s arrival from Moscow, many…
XVIII
On the 1st of October, on the feast of the…
XIX
In the middle of September the Rostovs and their transport…
XX
After the enemy’s entry into Moscow and the reports denouncing…
XXI
During this period, when all the French wanted was to…
XXII
Pierre was with this depot among the prisoners. On the…
XXIII
One of the first people Andrei met in the army…
About the Author and Translator
Praise
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
LEO TOLSTOY Photograph, Moscow, 1868 (#ulink_60b02ed4-1e4e-5de7-9fbc-813e9344b806)
INTRODUCTION
Ben Jonson is said to have criticized Shakespeare when told that ‘hee never blotted out line’, and Sir Walter Scott was similarly an author who wrote with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy. Leo Tolstoy, in contrast, regularly rewrote and restructured much of his work, on occasion spending years immersed in elaborate correction. It is not surprising, therefore, that War and Peace, the longest major Russian novel ever written, occupied the greater part of the decade 1863 to 1873. He had been mulling over the potential of an historical novel some years before that, but his earliest drafts for the book dating from 1863 show that it was then that he decided to write a work whose setting would be the dramatic events associated with Russia’s wars against Napoleon. Two years later he published the first section in the literary journal Russkii Vestnik under the title 1805, and the second entitled War appeared a year later in 1866.
Although Tolstoy’s prime concern lay with exploration of human character, he was fascinated by the grand drama of historical events. He had experienced war in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Crimea, and from a cheerfully unreflecting Russian patriot he became increasingly concerned to discover the underlying rationale of a phenomenon which perversely legitimated lying, spying, murder, cruelty, and rapine on a grand scale – vices which civil society is at pains to suppress. Conventional historians of the day recounted events in terms of grand strategy carried out by commanders executing complex manoeuvres, which proved successful or unsuccessful according to their talents and those of their adversaries. Tolstoy – who had known at first hand the smoke, din, fire, terror, and heady intoxication of battle – saw in contrast only the interplay of confusion, chance, and a multitude of disparate factors far beyond the capacity of individuals to control or even understand.
All this is well known: what is less so is the extent to which Tolstoy pursued painstaking researches as an historical novelist. His best biographer, the Englishman Aylmer Maude, suggested that War and Peace was not an historical novel in the true sense, since the age in which his story is set remained within the memory of his parents’ generation. But this is to do Tolstoy an injustice. His notes and correspondence illustrate the remarkable extent to which he sought to reconstruct the past, whether pacing the battlefield at Borodino or investigating recondite details ranging from the extent to which men still wore hair powder in 1805 to the fact that the copse in which Pierre Bezukhov and Dolokhov fought their duel was pine rather than birch.
One of Tolstoy’s major problems was that of establishing the precise nature of his genre. As he explained to Katkov, the editor of Russkii Vestnik, in January 1865: ‘the work is not a novel and is not a story, and cannot have the sort of plot whose interest ends with the dénouement.
I am writing this in order to ask you not to call my work a novel in the table of contents, or perhaps in the advertisement either. This is very important to me, and I particularly request it of you’.
Those sections which appeared in 1865 and 1866 were but the introduction to a much larger work, which by the end of 1866 he believed he had completed. Over the previous six months he had written 726 pages of manuscript, which he felt brought the work to a satisfactory conclusion. His pleasure in writing was intense, and as he explained later he ‘generally enjoyed good spirits’, and on days when his work had gone well, he would gleefully announce that he had left ‘a bit of my life in the inkstand’.
It is this version which comprises the present work, which was first made available to the Russian general reader seven years ago, and is here presented for the first time in English. The title Tolstoy proposed was All’s Well That Ends Well, from which it may be correctly inferred that it had a happy ending. There can be no doubt that he intended this version to be published, for which he engaged as illustrator a talented artist named Nikolai Sergeievich Bashilov. Tolstoy and Bashilov enjoyed a close and constructive collaboration. Thus when the author explained that he had based the character of Natasha in large part on his sister-in-law Tatiana, the artist’s task was the easier since he was her uncle. Sadly, Bashilov’s increasing illness made it ever harder for him to meet insistent deadlines imposed by the author and publisher, and at the end of 1870 he died while undergoing a health cure in the Tyrol. Consequently the early editions of the novel remain unillustrated, and it was not until 1893 that an able successor to Bashilov was found in the form of Leonid Pasternak, father of the novelist Boris.
War and Peace ‘as we know it’ was published in six volumes in 1868–69. By that time Tolstoy had extensively revised All’s Well That Ends Well, radically altering its conclusion and carrying the story forward in part as a reminder that life does not come to a gratifying halt with marriage. Two years later he wrote disparagingly: ‘I’ve stopped writing, and will never again write verbose nonsense like War and Peace. I’m guilty, but I swear I’ll never do it again’. However he had not reached the end of his creative activity, and in 1873 set about further extensive restructuring. ‘I’ve started to prepare a second edition of War and Peace and to strike out what is superfluous – some things need to be struck out altogether, others to be removed and printed separately’, he wrote to a literary friend in March. ‘And if you can remember, remind me of what is bad. I’m afraid to touch it, because there is so much that is bad in my eyes that I would want to write it again after refurbishing it’.
Even this was not the end of the story, for when his wife came to issue a fresh collected edition of his works in 1886 it was the 1868–69 version that she chose. Whether this was Tolstoy’s choice remains unknown, but he can scarcely have disapproved. This illustrates the extent to which he envisaged his creation as a living entity subject to continual modification, and confirms the desirability of making public the first version he completed. Whether the final ‘canonical’ edition represents an improvement must be left to readers to judge, and the present publication at last provides means of effecting the comparison.
Those who have never read War and Peace will be able to enjoy experiencing Tolstoy’s first heady production of that wonderful work, and those who have will undergo the stimulating experience of being able to compare it with its predecessor. Apart from the truncated conclusion, attentive readers will note many differences of detail and emphasis. My own interest was particularly aroused by subtle variations in the treatment of Dolokhov, the bold and on occasion cruel lover of Pierre’s faithless wife Hélène. Based on Tolstoy’s cousin, the noted duellist and adventurer Feodor Ivanovich Tolstoy, whose larger-than-life personality clearly fascinated the novelist, he erupts as another fictional counterpart into the marvellous short story ‘Two Hussars’, where in the space of twenty-four hours he turns upside down the sleepy life of a provincial town. The writer was fortunate in possessing a family and friends preeminently adaptable to the most exotic of fictive requirements.
As he wrote to his cousin Alexandra, a lady in waiting to the Empress, during the writing of All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘you possess that Tolstoyan wildness that’s common to us all. Not for nothing did Feodor Ivanovich have himself tattooed’. His words might have as aptly been applied to the larger-than-life author himself.
Nikolai Tolstoy, 2007
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
Like most literary classics, War and Peace has generated a long and distinguished tradition of English translations. But while most are based on the ‘classical’ 1500-page text, the present translation is based on an earlier, shorter text that is now being translated into English for the first time.
This shorter Russian text was brought out in 2000 by the Moscow publisher Igor Zakharov as ‘the first complete edition of the great novel War and Peace’. His edition, however, was in fact derived from an earlier edition which, although unknown to the world at large, had long been familiar to literary specialists as the first draft, recovered by the Tolstoy scholar Evelina E. Zaidenshnur. This text, together with a 60-page commentary, had been published as a scholarly monograph in 1983, in vol. 94 of the Academy of Sciences journal Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), although much of the material had appeared earlier still in the 90-volume Jubilee edition of Tolstoy’s Collected Works.
Evelina Zaidenshnur’s reconstruction was an extraordinary achievement, the fruit of fifty years’ painstaking paleographical detective work in the massive archive held by the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow. This work had culminated in the first, full working version whose last page contains the word: ‘Konets’ or ‘The End’. Known to have reached completion in December 1866, this draft had soon been dispersed in the process of rewriting that began shortly after. Zaidenshnur’s text was a mosaic of manuscripts retrieved from across the archive and reassembled through the careful matching of Tolstoy’s original handwriting, ink and paper and close examination of his numerous notebooks, diaries and letters for clues and references to the work in progress.
Zaidenshnur’s edition offers us a coherent narrative which, despite its occasional roughness and sketchiness and obvious differences, is often as polished and fine as the later, canonical version. Inevitably, however, in the long process of deciphering several thousands of pages of impenetrable scrawl, crisscrossed with cancellations, messily overwritten and with scribbled additions ballooning into the margins, there were errors and oversights in transcription. Words were misread, sentences misplaced. Nevertheless, as befitted a scholarly enterprise, the text included multiple variants in brackets (cancelled words as well as alternative readings) and the entire project was described in meticulous depth. It was this essentially academic text, shorn of its scholarly apparatus and its variants, somewhat rewritten and with none of its original French, that was re-issued in 2000 by Zakharov as ‘the first’ War and Peace, and promoted as ‘half the usual length, less war and more peace, no philosophical digressions’, and so on. Although the English translation that follows is based largely on that edition, frequent reference has also been made to Zaidenshnur’s edition as well as the later ‘classical’ text.
Claiming this as the ‘original’ War and Peace, might, as one reviewer remarked, ‘cause purists to wince’. This version is not, however, intended as substitute for the canonical version so much as its complement, rather as a brilliant sketch, or series of sketches, stands in relation to the final canvas of a great masterpiece. Complete if unpolished, this version still offers authentic delights, especially to those readers new to Tolstoy (and for whom there await all the greater pleasures of the longer text). Many familiar scenes – the Rostovs’ banquet, the hunt, the dancing, for example – are already here, although they will later be placed in settings of altogether grander, more universal proportions. Devotees and scholars (above all those unable to read the original Russian) will value this version meanwhile for the rare insights it offers into the ‘creative laboratory’ of a consummate artist. Close comparison will point to the scattered phrases in the one that blossom into major themes and characters (such as Platon Karataev) in the other. Or reveal how elements in the early draft are cast aside, redeployed, or amplified in the ruthless process of reshaping, refining and rearranging that duly occurs on the large scale and the small. Sympathies switch from one figure to another; attributes migrate; names are reassigned; a single character splits into two, while several meld into one; new faces enter, others depart. And while the storyline takes significant new turns, so the weave of its telling grows increasingly intricate. The creation of War and Peace, as R.F. Christian and K. Feuer have shown, was dynamic in process – there was no exact plan, it evolved in the writing: Tolstoy’s unfolding philosophy would shape his narrative as much as the narrative would shape his philosophy. After several false starts (which would all leave their traces), new ideas would be tried out continually as each draft was refashioned. The difference in treatment is most apparent in the endings, where the hastily outlined ‘happy’ ending of this first full version gives way to closing scenes that subtly recapitulate the grand themes which resonate throughout the mature work – life and death, peace and war, and so on – and suggest continuity rather than conclusion. This early draft, then, catches the work at a crucial stage in its development, just when Tolstoy was poised to expand his core text into what would finally emerge as the War and Peace that we know.
In accordance with the convention of the day Tolstoy, even before his draft was complete, had already submitted the opening parts for publication, and three instalments, under the overall title 1805, appeared in 1865 and 1866 in the journal Russkii Vestnik (Russian Herald). However, conceiving his work as a single entity, Tolstoy abandoned serial publication. The end of his first full draft was reached in December 1866, but dissatisfied with its scope, Tolstoy withdrew to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, took a break over the new year holidays and then embarked on three further years of intense research and rewriting, during which he would gradually transform what was now more or less a family chronicle (and which he considered calling All’s Well That Ends Well) into the monumental epic that would be entitled War and Peace. Over the next few years Tolstoy travelled to battle sites, devoured memoirs and histories, and talked with old soldiers who could still recall the events of their youth. His finished text, amplified and elaborated, would be almost twice its original length.
Although the full-length version was initially published in six volumes between 1868 and 1869, it would undergo yet further extensive revision before appearing in 1873 as the single, four-volume set that Tolstoy had originally envisaged. This second edition of 1873 is regarded by some as the most authoritative. However, Tolstoy continued to make changes in subsequent editions, adjusting details of style, translating the many passages of French into Russian, rearranging the text and removing the more intrusive of his philosophical digressions to a separate section at the end. The divisions into volumes, parts and chapters differed with each edition. Moreover, by the 1880s, Tolstoy had lost interest in the publication of his own work and handed his copyrights to his wife, Sofia, and she failed to ensure that earlier amendments were incorporated into later editions. Thus among the six editions that came out between 1868 and 1886, no two are alike, and a consensus has never been reached as to which of them is best or definitive.
Further complications dog the question of an ‘authorised’ version. Tolstoy’s wife had copied the entire work out seven times in the course of its composition, but along the way had acted as editor, making her own changes, and censoring and suppressing whatever could be deemed offensive or dangerous. Others had a hand in this too, but – odd as it may seem today – this was done with Tolstoy’s agreement.
His attitude should be placed in context. In Russia, because political and philosophical ideas were denied open public debate, they found expression in literature and poetry, and while this resulted in a uniquely rich body of work freighted with powerful allusions, the poets and writers themselves were turned into potential subversives with state censors routinely scrutinising their every word. Hence we find Tolstoy telling his editor P.I. Bartenev on 6 December 1867: ‘I give you carte blanche to cross out everything that strikes you as dangerous. You know better than I what is possible and what is not.’ And again on 8 December 1867: ‘… I am beginning to fear that censorship or the printers could give us nasty trouble. I place my only hope about these two matters in you.’
Tolstoy’s very earliest attempts, during the 1850s, at what would become War and Peace were clearly engaged with the politics of his own day. His initial central figure was an ageing Decembrist revolutionary (an older Pierre Bezukhov) returning to Russia from exile after serving his sentence for participating in the unsuccessful uprising of December 1825 (from which came the name ‘Decembrist’). To portray him in depth, however, Tolstoy saw that he needed to understand his hero’s youth. This had been shaped by the year 1812, when Russia had rejoiced at the disaster of Napoleon’s failed invasion. Yet that year could not be separated from 1807 and 1805, when it had been Russia’s turn to be shamed by Napoleon, this time in direct military defeat. Thus Tolstoy’s focus had kept pushing ever further back from his own time to that of his grandfather, and in the end his narrative would deal with those early years alone. What came to concern him were not historic events in themselves so much as the continuity, the cyclicity, of ideas: although centred on Russia’s confrontation with Napoleon, the book’s main sweep of action is framed by the unseen French revolution which has taken place before the story opens and the Decembrist uprising which will take place after it ends. Both are signalled in the ardent aspirations of the young: first in Pierre who has returned from post-revolutionary Paris, then in Andrei’s young son, who eagerly eavesdrops on political talk that heralds the forthcoming change. Tolstoy’s contemporaries (as well as the censors) could easily catch these implications and read this apparent work of history as a comment on their own times. In his great transformation, Tolstoy’s point of departure had become his point of arrival.
The more he researched the intricacies of the past, the more Tolstoy came to distrust accepted histories with their false view of great men and great events. As his perspective lengthened, so it widened from the life of a single individual to encompass the interwoven fates of whole families and the destinies of nations. The scope likewise broadened beyond his own social class of princes and emperors to include all Russian society down to the peasants and common soldiers, whom he would duly regard as the bedrock of wisdom and patriotism. With his mass of personal evidence and detailed reminiscence, Tolstoy blended fact with fiction until the two could barely be told apart: mythic figures from history were brought to life as convincingly as his imaginary inventions, all invested alike with well documented words and actions and animated by incisive psychological insight. Tolstoy taught lessons in reading as well as in life: what looks significant here will be insignificant there, what seemed trivial before seems important after. In the teeming tumult of life, in the unstoppable onrush of events no one can ever know or determine his or her place or fate.
These philosophical reflections were shaped into essays and discursive digressions that were initially incorporated into the flow of the narrative (but were later amended or removed). Yet War and Peace is more than just story and lecture: the texture itself embodies the philosophy that it expounds. Keen to free himself from novelistic constraints, Tolstoy turned his creation into what Henry James would disparage as a ‘loose baggy monster’, a vast web of the ‘accidental and the arbitrary’. But apparent inconsistencies turn out to be continuous threads that form and reform in a stream of flux and inconsequence: the lives of central figures are revealed at significant moments in sharply observed episodes; bystanders are briefly caught by the limelight, then vanish for ever in the flow of the text. Even the central characters flourish and fade as we turn the pages. The reader thus turns spectator, immersed, watching, puzzling, remembering, the process of reading akin to living itself. What strikes us as strange – some unexplained personage here, some name mentioned there – may be part of the overall design, the text consciously rendered as random and unfathomable as human existence.
It is hard, however, to distinguish intentionality from inadvertence in an early draft such as this. While the anomalies in Zaidenshnur’s edition are usually ascribed to the misreading of manuscript, some of them might not be outright mistakes but rather the tentative signs of Tolstoy’s developing ideas. Although the more obvious anomalies have been corrected, some still remain in the Zakharov edition. Should these be conveyed into English, or seamlessly resolved, and if so, how? The loyalties of a translation are always torn between the future reader and the past source. The present translation treads a fine line between the two, sometimes offering close recreations, warts (so to speak) and all, but at other times making minor adjustments, which often means bringing the text anachronistically into line with the canonical version. The following illustrates a minor adjustment. In a sentence that occurs in both early drafts, but is cut from the canonical version, Pierre, at the English Club, drinks something called ‘Alito Margo’. This non-existent potion was clearly a misreading of Tolstoy’s Russian scrawl for ‘Château Margaux’, a French wine that was probably unknown to scholars in the Soviet period, but has been rendered thus in the English.
In occasional places, to bridge puzzling jumps that occur in the source texts, words have been added in square brackets for the sake of continuity.
Those familiar with the canonical War and Peace may wonder about the general absence of French from this edition, that language having constituted some 2.5 per cent of Tolstoy’s original text. Accurately depicting the period in which the book is set, Tolstoy shows the Russian upper classes complacently writing and conversing in French, but this conceals an irony, for he also shows not only how the speaking of French alienated the aristocracy from their own native people, but also how it compromised their declared allegiance when Russia was at war with France.
Whereas Zaidenshnur (1983) faithfully reproduces all the French from Tolstoy’s original manuscripts, the Zakharov version (2000) translates every word into Russian. This is less contentious than it might seem, for Tolstoy himself, when criticised for featuring so much French in his first edition of 1868–9, translated it all into Russian for the second edition of 1873. He also employed various compensatory techniques, telling the reader, for example, that someone was speaking in French when the words themselves were Russian. Posthumous editions would in due course restore the French to the main text and relegate Tolstoy’s Russian translations to footnotes. Soviet editions with the French were called ‘classical’, while cheaper ‘popular’ editions remained all-Russian.
But questions of readability aside, the loss of French deprives the text of a crucial subtlety, for Tolstoy constantly uses language as a gauge of sincerity and realism: French signals artificiality and remoteness, Russian signals integrity and groundedness, and folk idiom true earthy wisdom.
English translations have seldom reproduced all, if any, of the French. The present version restores it in ‘gestural’ form only (eh bien! O dieu!), to give a flavour of its original presence and remind the reader of its impact.
Names in Tolstoy present special problems. In the original manuscripts the names of chief protagonists are French throughout – André, Nicolas, Pierre and so on – although affectionate forms are always Russianised. The present translation uses the Russian forms Andrei and Nikolai, for example, but retains the French Hélène and Pierre, partly because of their uniqueness in the wider literary tradition. Transliteration of foreign words aims for readerly access rather than scholarly precision.
Place names follow Tolstoy’s idiosyncratic usage and most of his odd, unexplained names of people and apparently inconsistent dates or ages have been left. At that period, Russians used the Julian calendar, which was twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar then in general use elsewhere in Europe. But historical accuracy was of little concern to Tolstoy, and he wrote: ‘An historian and an artist describing an historic epoch have two quite different tasks before them.’ And given the deliberately distorted, impressionistic quality of certain passages, such details as the age assigned to a character seem to be not so much chronologically precise as approximations in development and mentality.
Tolstoy’s spelling is erratic but has generally been regularised. However, the alternate spellings of Bonaparte/Buonaparte follow the original draft exactly, for they subtly register the Russians’ changing view of the French leader’s repeated self-inventions, tracing the rise of this ‘upstart’ from low-born Corsican soldier (Buonaparte) to French general (Bonaparte) to Emperor (Napoleon). Russians would have perceived an audible difference between the derisively drawled vowel-sounds of Italian ‘Bu-o-na-par-te’, and the contemptuous snort of the French ‘Bonaparte’.
Finally we come to the slightly vexed question of Tolstoy’s style. Tolstoy was an experimental writer who rejected the nineteenth century novel with its conventions and pretensions, above all to authorial invisibility. He wished to convey widely differing experiential effects, many of them rooted in the visual: his writing is often craggy and rough, yet it achieves a piercing clarity that is as merciless as it is miraculous. This relentless percipience is relieved by softer moments of impressionism, such as his famous false-naive technique of ‘ostranenie’ or ‘defamiliarisation’ (numbingly tragic on the battlefield, wryly comic in the theatre). Similarly impressionistic are the long, winding sentences with their many clauses that hasten along in the recreation of swiftly passing time. Sometimes the slipping syntax that results from this haste has been corrected in English, but sometimes it has been left, true to the original. Such slippage could well be part of Tolstoy’s deliberate deformations. His generally hurtling manner has a brusqueness and vigour that purposely fly in the face of literary forebears (especially the gentilities of Turgenev, with whom he quarrelled). His use of the same unvarying adjective throughout a single passage, in grand disregard for fine style, creates an unrepentant hammering effect in Russian but raises problems in English, which abhors repetition of this kind. Whilst the present translation introduces small variations in the name of stylistic euphony, it occasionally mimics that repetition to enable readers to feel the force and strangeness of the original. Time and again Tolstoy insisted that this work was neither a novel nor a poem nor a history, and he would have loathed the idea of its being recast in translation as the very thing, a neat and tidy story, that he so strenuously sought to avoid.
Tolstoy’s presence in the text is felt everywhere, but especially in his use of the parenthetical aside, whereby the authorial voice suddenly and unashamedly disrupts the story to offer a comment or explanation, revealing a contempt for the very artifice of fiction with which it is beguiling us. In the Russian, this change of voice mid-dialogue carries no warning punctuation, but in the translation it is isolated by the usual marks. In this, as in so many other respects, Tolstoy’s virtuoso brilliance prefigures the modernists of the twentieth century: Vladimir Nabokov, for example, writing in English almost a hundred years later, would perfect the art of parenthesis with his famous: ‘(picnic, lightning)’, but well before that Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf were just two among the many whose admiration had taken the sincerest form it could, that of imitation. The present translation has tried to convey some of the special qualities that make this early version of War and Peace, written with the energy of an artist who was still feeling his way to greatness, so deserving of our close attention.
Jenefer Coates
Editor
Andrew Bromfield
Translator
Table of Russian Weights and Measures
Approximate equivalents of old Russian measurements:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Leo Tolstoy. Photograph, Moscow 1868. (#ulink_467fd2a2-8140-5af1-81cc-f800f4d00ac2)
Tolstoy. Photograph, 1862. (#ulink_e3430692-b7c8-502f-80aa-5d4e1a3598e9)
Prince Vasily. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_b7c1b77b-269c-534f-a926-70e7d4e458c8)
The Little Princess. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_a4860cbb-39c9-580c-a781-d4ae5249f355)
Pierre Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_bd0a91a5-2104-583e-a31e-107ee70be783)
Hippolyte Kuragin. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_27bf97fe-f0d6-5691-bfa1-f4c3084f7f06)
Pierre Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_25aaffe7-a559-58e0-9580-a0777e95272f)
Dolokhov’s Wager with the Englishman. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_6c3a25e4-6426-559e-8e64-d40a45f52866)
Sonya. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_bf8eb500-5570-572c-8f78-4ea93cce1d8c)
Natasha Rostov and Boris Drubetskoy. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_1b747fd3-838d-556b-a208-0e0165b49c39)
Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya and her son Boris. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_6df01836-3345-565f-b8d0-99fc17fe9202)
Dancing the Daniel Cooper. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Death of Count Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Struggle for the Document Case. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Maths Lesson. Wood engraving by K.I. Rikhai after the drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
Kutuzov. Engraving by Cardelli.
The Military Review: Kutuzov and Dolokhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Russian Army Marching Across the River Enns. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Napoleon in 1807. Engraving by Debucourt.
Bilibin. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Prince Andrei and Emperor Franz. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Wounded Rostov at the Campfire. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Engraving by Bosque after the drawing by Charles Vernet.
The Meeting of the Two Emperors at Tilsit on 25 June 1807. Engraving by Couché fils after the drawing by Zwiebach.
Natasha Dancing at the Uncle’s House. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1860s, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Smolensk, 20 August 1812. Lithograph.
The Battle of Borodino. Lithograph by Albrecht Adam.
A sheet of Manuscript 107.
Final sheet of Manuscript 107: “The End”.
PART I
TOLSTOY Photograph 1862 Autograph on mounting: “1862. I took this myself. Count L.N. Tolstoy. Photograph at Yasnaya Polyana.” (#ulink_699644f9-5dcc-5ac8-9d2a-4624531e85c5)
I
“Eh bien, mon prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now merely estates, the private estates of the Buonaparte family. Non, I warn you, if you don’t say this means war, if you still defend all these vile acts, all these atrocities by an Antichrist (for I really do believe he is the Antichrist), then I no longer know you, you are no longer mon ami, you are no longer, as you put it, my devoted slave. But, anyway, how do you do, how are you? I see I am frightening you, do come and sit down and tell me what’s going on.”
These were the words with which, in July 1805, the renowned Anna Pavlovna Scherer, lady-in-waiting and confidante of the Empress Maria Fedorovna, greeted the influential and high-ranking Prince Vasily, who was the first to arrive at her soirée. Anna Pavlovna had been coughing for several days, and had what she called the grippe (grippe then being a new word, used only by the few), and therefore had not attended at court nor even left the house. All of the notes she had sent out in the morning with a scarlet-liveried servant had contained the same message, without variation:
If, Count (or Prince), you have nothing better to do, and the prospect of an evening in the company of a poor invalid is not too alarming, then I should be delighted to see you at home between seven and ten o’clock.
Annette Scherer.
“Dieu, what a fierce attack!” replied the prince with a faint smile, not in the least perturbed by this reception as he entered, wearing his embroidered court dress-coat, with knee-breeches, low shoes and starry decorations, and a serene expression on his cunning face.
He spoke that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke, but also thought, and with the gently modulated, patronising intonation that was natural to a man of consequence who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna and kissed her hand, presenting to her the bald, perfumed top of his head, which gleamed white even between the grey hairs, then he calmly seated himself on the divan.
“First of all, tell me how you are feeling, ma chère amie? Do set your friend’s mind at rest,” he said, without changing his tone of voice, in which, beneath the decorum and sympathy, there was a hint of indifference and even mockery.
“How can you expect me to feel well, when one is suffering so, morally speaking? How can anyone with feeling stay calm in times like these?” said Anna Pavlovna. “You are here for the whole evening, I hope?”
“But what about the festivities at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I really do have to show my face,” said the prince. “My daughter will be calling to take me there.”
“I thought today’s celebrations had been cancelled. I do declare all these fêtes and fireworks are becoming an utter bore.”
“Had they but known you wished it, they would have cancelled the celebrations,” said the prince by force of habit, like a wound-up clock, voicing things that he did not even wish to be believed.
“Don’t tease me. Eh bien, what has been decided following this dispatch from Novosiltsev? You know everything.”
“What can I say?” the prince said in a cold, bored voice. “What has been decided? It has been decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and we are apparently prepared to burn ours too.”
Whether Prince Vasily’s words were wise or foolish, animated or indifferent, he uttered them in a tone that suggested he was repeating them for the thousandth time, like an actor speaking a part in an old play, as though the words were not the product of his reason, not spoken from the mind or heart, but by rote, with his lips alone.
By contrast, Anna Pavlovna Scherer, despite her forty years, was full of an impulsive vivacity which long practice had scarcely taught her to curb within the limits of courtly decorum and discretion. At every moment she seemed on the point of uttering something improper, yet although she came within a hair’s breadth, no impropriety ever burst forth. She was not good-looking, but the rapturous enthusiasm of which she herself was aware in her glance and in the vivacity of her smile, which expressed her infatuation with ideal causes, evidently furnished her with that quality which was called interesting. From Prince Vasily’s words and his expression it was clear that the circles in which they both moved had long ago adopted the unanimous opinion that Anna Pavlovna was a sweet, good-hearted enthusiast and patriot who dabbled in matters that were not entirely her concern and often took things to extremes, but was lovable for the sincerity and ardour of her feelings. Being an enthusiast had become her position in society, and sometimes, even when she did not really wish it, she played the enthusiast simply in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The restrained smile that played constantly on Anna Pavlovna’s face, although it did not become her faded features, was an expression, as it is in spoilt children, of a constant awareness of her own charming defect, of which she neither wished, nor was able, nor felt it necessary, to rid herself.
PRINCE VASILY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_4d6f7eb8-4910-59be-8e34-16d7c32ca43e)
The contents of the dispatch from Novosiltsev, who had set out to Paris for peace negotiations, were as follows.
On arriving in Berlin, Novosiltsev had learned that Bonaparte had issued a decree annexing the Genoese Republic to the French Empire, while at the same time he was declaring his desire for reconciliation with England through the mediation of Russia. Novosiltsev, having halted in Berlin on the surmise that such coercive action on the part of Bonaparte might well alter the Emperor’s intentions, had requested His Majesty’s decision on whether he should move on to Paris or return home. The reply to Novosiltsev had already been drawn up and was due to be forwarded the following day. The seizure of Genoa was the long-sought pretext for a declaration of war, to which the opinion of court society was even more readily inclined than the military. The reply stated: “We do not wish to conduct negotiations with a man who, while declaring his desire to make peace, continues with his encroachments.”
All this was the very latest news of the day. The prince evidently knew all these details from reliable sources and related them to the lady-in-waiting in jocular fashion.
“Well, and where have these negotiations led us?” Anna Pavlovna asked, continuing with the conversation, as before, in French. “And what is the point of all these negotiations? It is not negotiations, but death for the death of the martyr that the scoundrel needs,” she said, flaring her nostrils and swinging round on the divan, then smiling.
“How very bloodthirsty you are, ma chère! Not everything in politics is done as it is in the drawing room. There are precautionary measures to be taken,” Prince Vasily said with his melancholy smile which, though unnatural, had made itself so much at home on the prince’s old face after thirty years of constant repetition that its unnaturalness seemed quite normal. “Are there any letters from your family?” he added, evidently considering this lady-in-waiting unworthy of serious political conversation and attempting to lead her on to a different subject.
“But where have all these precautionary measures led us?” Anna Pavlovna persisted, refusing to give way.
“If nothing else, to discovering the opinion of that Austria of which you are so fond,” said Prince Vasily, clearly teasing Anna Pavlovna and not wishing to allow the tone of the conversation to move beyond the facetious.
But Anna Pavlovna had become heated.
“Oh, don’t you talk to me about Austria! Perhaps I don’t understand anything, but Austria does not want war and never has wanted it. She is betraying us. Russia alone must be the saviour of Europe. Our benefactor is aware of his high calling and he will be faithful to it. That is the one thing in which I believe. Our kind and wonderful sovereign is destined for the very greatest of roles in this world, and he is so virtuous and good, that God will not abandon him, and he will fulfil his calling to crush the hydra of revolution, which is more horrible than ever in the person of this assassin and villain. We alone must redeem the blood of the martyr. In whom can we place our hope, I ask you? England, with her commercial spirit, will not and cannot understand the lofty soul of Emperor Alexander. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wishes to see, she seeks an ulterior motive in our actions. What did they say to Novosiltsev? Nothing. They did not understand, they cannot understand the selflessness of our Emperor, who wants nothing for himself but wishes everything possible for the good of the world. And what have they promised? Nothing. And even what they have promised will never be done! Prussia has already declared that Buonaparte is invincible and all of Europe is powerless against him … And I don’t believe a single word that Hardenberg or Haugwitz say … This vaunted Prussian neutrality is no more than a trap. I believe only in God and the exalted destiny of our dear Emperor. He will save Europe!” She stopped abruptly, with a mocking smile at her own vehemence.
“I think,” the prince said with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzengerode, you would have taken the Prussian king’s assent by storm. You are so eloquent. Are you going to give me tea?”
“In a moment. A propos,” she said, composing herself once again, “I have a most interesting person coming today, the Vicomte de Mortemart, he is related to the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best families of France. He is one of the good émigrés, the real ones.
He behaved very well and has lost everything. He was with the Duc d’Enghien, with the hapless holy martyr while he was visiting Etenheim. They say he is quite a darling. Your charming son Hippolyte has promised to bring him here. All our ladies are quite beside themselves over him,” she added with a smile of disdain, as though she were sorry for the poor ladies who could think of nothing better to do than fall in love with the Vicomte de Mortemart.
“Apart from yourself, naturally,” said the prince in his gently mocking tone. “I have seen him in society, this vicomte,” he added, evidently little interested by the prospect of seeing Mortemart. “Tell me,” he said in a deliberately careless fashion, as if he had just remembered something, even though his enquiry was in fact the main purpose of his visit, “is it true that the Dowager Empress desires the appointment of Baron Funke as First Secretary in Vienna? It would appear that this baron is something of a nonentity.”
Prince Vasily wished to have his own son appointed to this position, which others were attempting to obtain for the baron through the Empress Maria Fedorovna.
Anna Pavlovna hooded her eyes almost completely in order to indicate that neither she, nor anyone else, could judge what was desirable or pleasing to the Empress.
“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,” was all that she said, in a tone that was particularly aloof and melancholy. The moment Anna Pavlovna mentioned the Empress’s name, her face suddenly presented an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect, combined with the sadness that she felt every time she mentioned her exalted patroness in conversation. She said Her Highness had been pleased to show great regard for Baron Funke, and once again her gaze was veiled with melancholy.
The prince lapsed into indifferent silence. Anna Pavlovna, with her characteristic courtly and feminine adroitness and prompt tact, felt a desire at once to tweak the prince’s nose for having ventured to speak in such a way about a person recommended to the Empress, and at the same time to console him.
“By the way, à propos your family,” she said, “did you know that your daughter is the delight of all society? They think her quite as lovely as the day. The Empress very often asks after her: ‘Where is my Belle Hélène?’”
The prince bowed in token of his respect and gratitude.
“I often think,” Anna Pavlovna continued after a moment’s silence, moving closer to the prince and smiling at him affectionately, as though indicating in this way that the conversation on politics and society was at an end, and the heart-to-heart talk was about to begin, “I often think how unfairly happiness is sometimes distributed in life. What have you done for fate to have given you two such marvellous children – excluding Anatole, your youngest, him I do not like,” she interjected categorically, raising her eyebrows. “Such charming children. And really, you appreciate them far less than anyone else, and therefore you do not deserve them.”
And she smiled her rapturous smile.
“Que voulez-vous? Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity,” said the prince listlessly.
“Stop your joking. I wanted to have a serious talk with you. You know, I am displeased with your younger son. I don’t know him at all, but he appears to have set himself out to earn a scandalous reputation. Just between ourselves” (her face assumed a melancholy expression) “he was spoken of at Her Majesty’s, and people feel sorry for you …”
The prince did not reply, but she gazed meaningfully at him in silence as she waited for a reply. Prince Vasily frowned.
“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I have done everything that a father can for their education, and both of them have turned out fools. Hippolyte at least is a docile fool, but Anatole is a rowdy one. That is the only difference,” he said, smiling more unnaturally and animatedly than usual, and in so doing revealing with unusual distinctness something coarse and disagreeable in the folds that formed around his mouth, making Anna Pavlovna think it could not be very pleasant to be the son or daughter of such a father.
“And why do men like you have children? If you were not a father, there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pavlovna, raising her eyes thoughtfully.
“I am your devoted slave, and I can confess this only to you. My children are the bane of my existence. They are my cross. That is how I explain things to myself. What would you have me do?…” He fell silent, as a gesture of submission to a cruel fate. “Ah yes, if only one could choose to have them or not at will … I am certain that in our time such an invention will be made.”
Anna Pavlovna did not much like the idea of such an invention.
“You have never thought of marrying off your prodigal son Anatole. They do say that old maids have a mania for marrying people off. I am not yet aware of this weakness in myself, but I do have one little person who is very unhappy with her father, a kinswoman of ours, the Princess Bolkonskaya.”
Prince Vasily did not reply, although with the quickness of wit and memory natural to people of high society he indicated with a movement of his head that he had taken note of this information.
“Indeed, d’you know that this Anatole costs me forty thousand a year,” he said, evidently incapable of curbing his gloomy train of thought. He was silent for a moment.
“What will happen in five years’ time, if things carry on like this? Such are the rewards of being a father. Is she rich, your princess?”
“Her father is very rich and mean. He lives in the country. You know, the famous Prince Bolkonsky, retired from service under the deceased Emperor and nicknamed the King of Prussia. He’s a very intelligent man, but an eccentric and a difficult character. The poor girl is so unhappy. She has a brother, he’s the one who recently married Lise Meinen, and is now Kutuzov’s adjutant, he lives here and will be coming this evening. She is the only daughter.”
“Listen, ma chère Annette,” said the prince, suddenly catching hold of the other person’s hand and for some reason tugging it downwards. “Arrange this business for me and I shall be your most devoted slave for ever. She comes from a good family and is rich. That is all I require.”
And with those free and familiar, graceful movements that were so characteristic of him, he raised the lady-in-waiting’s hand and kissed it, and having kissed it he waved the hand through the air as he sprawled back in his armchair, gazing away to the side.
“Attendez,” said Anna Pavlovna, pondering. “I will have a word today with Lise, young Bolkonsky’s wife. And maybe it will all be settled. I shall begin to study my trade as an old maid with your family.”
II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room began filling up little by little. The highest nobility of St. Petersburg arrived, people who differed greatly in age and character, but were alike in terms of the society in which they all lived: the diplomat Count Z. arrived, covered in stars and decorations from all the foreign courts, then came the Princess L., a fading beauty, the wife of an envoy; a decrepit general entered, clattering his sabre and wheezing; then Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, entered, having called to collect her father in order to go on with him to the ambassador’s festivities. She was wearing a ball gown and her insigne as a lady-in-waiting. The young little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as the most enchanting woman in St. Petersburg, also arrived; she had married the previous winter and now no longer appeared at great society events on account of being pregnant, but she still went out to small soirées.
“You have not yet met …” or “I don’t think you know my aunt …” said Anna Pavlovna to each of her guests as they arrived, leading them across with great seriousness to a little old woman with tall bows on her cap who had come gliding out of the next room as soon as the guests had begun to arrive; she introduced each by name, slowly shifting her gaze from guest to aunt, before moving aside. All of the guests performed the ritual of greeting this aunt who was known to no one, in whom no one was interested and whom no one wanted to meet. Anna Pavlovna followed their greetings with sad, solemn concern, tacitly giving approval. In speaking to each of them the aunt used the same expressions, whether they concerned the guest’s health, her own health or the health of Her Majesty, which today, thank God, was improved. Concealing their haste out of a sense of decorum, all who approached the old woman left with a feeling of relief at an onerous duty fulfilled, never to approach her again for the entire evening. Of the ten or so gentlemen and ladies already present, some were gathered by the tea table, some were in the nook behind the trellis, and some by the window: all of them made conversation and moved freely about from one group to another.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya arrived with her needlework in a velvet bag embroidered in gold. Her pretty little upper lip with its faint hint of a dark moustache was too short to cover her teeth, but it opened all the more sweetly for that and occasionally stretched down more sweetly still to touch her lower lip. As is always the case with thoroughly attractive women, her fault – the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth – seemed to be her special, very own beauty. Everyone was gladdened by the sight of this pretty mother-to-be so full of health and vitality, who bore her condition so lightly. Just looking at her, being with her and talking for a while made old men as well as bored, sullen young men feel as though they themselves were growing like her. Anyone who spoke with her and saw the radiant smile that accompanied her every word and the brilliant white teeth that were constantly visible, thought he was especially charming that day. Every one of them thought so. Waddling with short, quick steps, the little princess moved round the table with her needlework bag hanging from her arm and, adjusting her dress, sat herself down happily on the divan beside the silver samovar, as though whatever she did was amusing to herself and to everyone around her.
“I’ve brought along my work,” she said, opening the top of her reticule and addressing everybody at once.
“Now, Annette, don’t you play any nasty tricks on me,” she said, addressing the hostess. “You wrote that you were only having a little soirée, and see how poorly dressed I am.” And she spread out her arms to show off her elegant grey gown trimmed with lace and girdled with a broad ribbon under the bosom.
“Don’t you worry, Lise, you will always be the loveliest of all,” replied Anna Pavlovna.
“You know, my husband is abandoning me, he’s going off to get himself killed,” she continued in the same tone, addressing the general. “Tell me, whatever is the point of this loathsome war?” she asked, turning to Prince Vasily and, without waiting for a reply, turned to Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène: “You know, Hélène, you are becoming too lovely, just too lovely.”
“What a delightful creature this little princess is!” Prince Vasily said quietly to Anna Pavlovna.
“Your charming son Hippolyte is madly in love with her.”
“The fool has taste.”
Shortly after the little princess entered, a stout young man with short-cropped hair came in, wearing spectacles, light-coloured knee-breeches after the fashion of the time, a high ruffle and brown tailcoat. Despite the fashionable cut of his clothes, this fat young man was clumsy and awkward, in the way that healthy peasant lads are clumsy and awkward. But he was unembarrassed and resolute in his movements. He halted for a moment in the centre of the drawing room and, failing to locate the hostess, bowed to everyone except her, despite the signs she was making to him. Taking the old aunt for Anna Pavlovna herself, he sat down beside her and began speaking, but finally realising from the aunt’s astonished face that this was not the right thing to do, he stood up and said:
THE LITTLE PRINCESS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_b53453fd-4238-5cc4-bccc-6e68205fc837)
“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I thought you weren’t you.”
Even the impassive aunt blushed at these senseless words and waved with a despairing expression to her niece, beckoning for help. Anna Pavlovna left the other guest with whom she was occupied and came across.
“It’s so very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come to visit a poor invalid,” she said to him, smiling and exchanging glances with her aunt.
Pierre then did something even worse. He sat down beside Anna Pavlovna with the expression of a man who intended to stay for some time and immediately started talking about Rousseau, of whom they had spoken at their last meeting but one. Anna Pavlovna had no time for this. She was busy listening, watching, arranging and rearranging her guests.
“I cannot understand why,” said the young man, peering significantly at his interlocutress over the top of his spectacles, “everyone so dislikes The Confessions, when the Nouvelle Héloïse is far more inferior.”
The fat young man expressed his meaning awkwardly, challenging Anna Pavlovna to an argument and completely failing to notice that the lady-in-waiting had absolutely no interest whatever in which work was good or bad, especially now, when she had so many other things to think of and remember.
PIERRE BEZUKHOV Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_4021ba93-ccc0-51b2-a13a-d115ead66826)
“‘May the last trumpet sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand,’” he said, smiling as he quoted the first page of The Confessions. “No, madame, if you read the book, you will love the man.”
“Yes, of course,” replied Anna Pavlovna, in spite of holding entirely the opposite opinion, and she surveyed her guests, wishing to get to her feet. But Pierre continued:
“It’s not just a book, it’s an entire work. The Confessions is a total confession. Is that not so?”
“But I have no desire to be his confessor, Monsieur Pierre, his sins are too vile,” she said, rising to her feet with a smile. “Come along, I shall introduce you to my cousin.”
And having rid herself of this young man who did not know how to behave, she returned to her concerns as mistress of the house and continued listening and watching, ready to offer assistance whenever conversation flagged, like the foreman of a spinning mill who, with his workers all at their places, keeps pacing about, watching that the spindles all keep turning. And just as the foreman of the spinning mill, on noticing that a spindle has stopped or is squeaking strangely or loudly, hurries across and adjusts it or sets it moving as it should, so Anna Pavlovna approached a circle that had fallen quiet or was talking too much and, with a single word or slight rearrangement, set her regular, decorous conversational engine in motion once again.
III
Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was in full swing. On various sides the spindles were humming away smoothly and steadily. Apart from the aunt, beside whom there sat only a single elderly lady with a thin, tearful face, somewhat out of place in this brilliant company, and the fat Monsieur Pierre who, following his tactless conversations with the aunt and Anna Pavlovna, had remained silent for the entire evening and, evidently being acquainted with hardly anyone there, merely gazed around with lively interest at those who were walking about and talking more loudly than others, the remaining company had divided into three circles. At the centre of one was the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vasily’s daughter, in the second it was Anna Pavlovna herself, in the third it was the little Princess Bolkonskaya – pretty, rosy-cheeked and very pregnant for her young age.
Prince Vasily’s son Hippolyte – “your charming son Hippolyte” as Anna Pavlovna invariably called him – made his entrance, as did the expected vicomte, over whom, according to Anna Pavlovna, “all our ladies” were quite beside themselves. Hippolyte came in peering through a lorgnette, and without lowering this lorgnette, drawled loudly but indistinctly, “the Vicomte de Mortemart” and immediately, paying no attention to his father, seated himself beside the little princess and, inclining his head so close that very little space remained between his face and hers, he began to tell her something obscure and private, laughing.
The vicomte was an attractive-looking young man, with mild features and manners who evidently considered himself a celebrity but, being well brought up, modestly permitted the company in which he found himself to take advantage of his person. Anna Pavlovna was obviously offering him to her guests as a treat. Just as a good maître d’hôtel presents as a supreme delicacy that piece of beef which no one would wish to eat if they had seen it in the filthy kitchen, so this evening Anna Pavlovna served up the vicomte to her guests as something supremely refined, although the gentlemen who were staying at the same hotel and played billiards with him every day saw him as little more than a master of cannon shots, and did not feel in the least bit fortunate to have met the vicomte and spoken with him.
Talk immediately turned to the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said the duke had been killed by his own magnanimity and that there were particular reasons for Bonaparte’s animosity.
“Ah! Do tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna.
The vicomte bowed slightly as a token of acquiescence and smiled courteously. Anna Pavlovna walked round the vicomte and invited everyone to listen to his story.
“The vicomte was personally acquainted with the duke,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one person.
“The vicomte is a marvellous raconteur,” she declared to another.
“So obviously a man of good society,” she said to a third, and thus the vicomte was served up to the company in a tasteful manner in the best possible light, like roast beef on a hot dish garnished with fresh green herbs.
The vicomte, about to begin his story, gave a delicate smile.
“Move over here, chère Hélène,” said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful princess, who was sitting a little distance away, at the centre of a different circle.
Princess Hélène was smiling. She stood up, wearing that same constant smile of a perfectly beautiful woman with which she had entered the drawing room. With a slight rustle of her white ball gown trimmed with its plush and fur, and a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair and diamonds, she stepped between the men who had made way for her and, looking at none of them, but smiling at all as though obligingly granting each one the right to admire the beauty of her figure and well-formed shoulders and her bosom and her back that were greatly exposed in the fashion of the day, and seeming to bring with her all the splendour of a ball, she went over to Anna Pavlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only was there not a shade of coquetry to be seen in her, but she seemed, on the contrary, to be ashamed of the all-too-overwhelming power of her undeniable beauty. It was as though she wished to diminish her beauty and could not. “What a beautiful woman!” said all who saw her.
As though overcome by something quite extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and lowered his eyes as she seated herself before him and illuminated him with that same unvarying smile.
“Madame, truly I fear for my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing his head and smiling.
The princess, finding it needless to respond, rested the elbow of her shapely, exposed arm on the table. She waited, smiling. Throughout the whole story she sat up straight, glancing occasionally either at her beautiful, well-fleshed arm, the shape of which had changed in pressing against the table, or at her even more beautiful bosom, on which she adjusted her diamond necklace; several times she rearranged the folds of her gown and every time that she was impressed by something in the story, she glanced round at Anna Pavlovna and immediately assumed the very same expression that the lady-in-waiting’s face wore, then settled once again into her radiant smile. Following Hélène, the little princess had also come over from the tea table.
“Attendez-moi, I’ll get my needlework,” she said. “Now, what ever are you thinking of?” she asked, addressing Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my ridicule.”
The little princess, smiling and chatting on all sides, promptly made everyone shuffle about as she took her place, and then cheerfully sat rearranging herself.
“Now I’m all right,” she said and, requesting them to begin, she took up her work. Prince Hippolyte, after bringing her work-bag, had gone round behind her and, drawing up an armchair, sat close beside her.
The charming Hippolyte was striking for his uncommon resemblance to his beautiful sister, but even more for the fact that, despite the resemblance, he was amazingly ugly. The features of his face were precisely the same as those of his sister, but in her case everything was constantly illuminated by a buoyant, self-sufficient, youthfully vital smile and an exceptional, classical beauty of body, while in the brother’s case, on the contrary, the same face was clouded by idiocy and invariably expressed a self-opinionated peevishness, while the body was puny and weak. The eyes, nose and mouth – all seemed to be clenched into a single indeterminate, dull grimace, and the hands and legs always assumed unnatural positions.
“It isn’t a ghost story, is it?” he asked, having seated himself beside the princess and hastily set his lorgnette to his eyes, as though he could not speak without this instrument.
“Most decidedly not, my dear fellow,” said the astonished storyteller, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“The thing is, I absolutely detest ghost stories,” he said in a tone that made it clear that he uttered words first and only realised what they meant afterwards.
Because he spoke with such self-confidence, no one could tell whether what he had said was very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat and knee-breeches in the flesh-pink shade that he called cuisse de nymphe éffrayée, with stockings and shoes. He had seated himself as far back as possible in the armchair, facing the raconteur, and placed one hand, with one plain and one engraved signet ring, upon the table in front of him in such an outstretched pose that it clearly cost him a great deal of effort to maintain it at that distance, and yet he held it there throughout the story. In the palm of his other hand he clasped his lorgnette, teasing up with that same hand the curly “titus” coiffure that lent his elongated face an even odder expression and, as though he had just remembered something, he began looking first at his hand with the rings, extended in display, then at the vicomte’s feet, and then he twisted himself entirely around with a rapid, lurching movement, the way he did everything, and stared long and hard at the Princess Bolkonskaya.
HIPPOLYTE KURAGIN Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_6c08dc01-0fba-5c30-af6e-3df42332061b)
“When I had the good fortune to see the late lamented Duc d’Enghien for the last time,” the vicomte began in a tone of mournful elegance, surveying his listeners, “he spoke in the most flattering terms of the beauty and genius of the great Mademoiselle Georges. Who does not know this brilliant and charming woman? I expressed my surprise as to how the duke could have come to know her, not having been in Paris in recent years. The duke smiled and told me that Paris is not as far from Mannheim as it might seem. I was horrified and informed his highness of my terror at the thought of his visiting Paris. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘God only knows whether even here we are not surrounded by turncoats and traitors and whether your presence in Paris, no matter how secret it may be, is not known to Buonaparte!’ But the duke only smiled at my words with the chivalry and courage which constitute the distinguishing trait of his line.”
“The house of Condé is a branch of laurel grafted on to the tree of the Bourbons, as Pitt recently said,” Prince Vasily pronounced in a monotone, as though he were dictating to some invisible clerk.
“Monsieur Pitt put it very well,” his son Hippolyte added laconically, twisting abruptly on his armchair, his trunk in one direction and his legs in the other, after hastily snatching up his lorgnette and directing his sights at his parent.
“In short,” continued the vicomte, addressing himself primarily to the beautiful Princess Hélène, who kept her gaze fixed on him, “I had to leave Etenheim and only later learned that the duke, in the impetuosity of his valour, had travelled to Paris and paid Mademoiselle Georges the honour not only of admiring her, but also of visiting her.”
“But he had an attachment of the heart for the Princess Charlotte de Rohan Rochefort,” Anna Pavlovna interrupted passionately. “They said that he was secretly married to her,” she added, evidently frightened by the imminent content of this tale, which seemed to her too free in the presence of a young girl.
“One attachment is no hindrance to another,” the vicomte continued, smiling subtly and failing to perceive Anna Pavlovna’s apprehension. “But the point is that prior to her intimacy with the duke, Mademoiselle Georges had enjoyed intimate relations with another person.”
He paused.
“That person was called Buonaparte,” he announced, glancing round at his listeners with a smile. Anna Pavlovna, in her turn, glanced around uneasily, seeing the tale becoming ever more dangerous.
“And so,” the vicomte continued, “the new sultan from the Thousand and One Nights did not scorn to spend frequent evenings at the home of the most beautiful, most agreeable woman in France. And Mademoiselle Georges” – he paused, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders – “was obliged to make a virtue of necessity. The fortunate Buonaparte would usually arrive in the evening, without appointing the days in advance.”
“Ah! I see what is coming, and it fills me with horror,” said the pretty little Princess Bolkonskaya with a shudder of her lissom, shapely shoulders.
The elderly lady, who had been sitting beside the aunt the whole evening, came to join the raconteur’s circle and shook her head with an emphatic, sad smile.
“It is terrible, is it not?” she said, although she had obviously not even heard the beginning of the story. No one paid any attention to the inappropriateness of her remark, nor indeed to her.
Prince Hippolyte promptly declared in a loud voice:
“Georges in the role of Clytemnestra, how marvellous!”
Anna Pavlovna remained silent and anxious, still not having finally made up her mind whether the tale that the vicomte was telling was proper or improper. On the one hand, it involved evening visits to actresses, on the other hand, if the Vicomte de Mortemart himself, a relative of the Montmorencys through the Rohans, the finest representative of the St. Germain district, was going to make unseemly talk in the drawing room, then who, after all, knew what was proper or improper?
“One evening,” the vicomte continued, surveying his listeners and becoming more animated, “this Clytemnestra, having enchanted the entire theatre with her astonishing interpretation of Racine, returned home and thought she would rest to recover from her fatigue and excitement. She was not expecting the sultan.”
Anna Pavlovna shuddered at the word “sultan”. Princess Hélène lowered her eyes and stopped smiling.
“Then suddenly the maidservant announced that the former Vicomte Rocroi wished to see the great actress. Rocroi was the name that the duke used for himself. He was received,” the vicomte added, and after pausing for a few seconds in order to make it clear that he was not telling all that he knew, he continued: “The table gleamed with crystal, enamel, silver and porcelain. Two places were set, the time flew by imperceptibly, and the delight …”
Unexpectedly at this point in the narrative Prince Hippolyte emitted a peculiar, loud sound, which some took for a cough, others for snuffling, mumbling or laughing, and he began hastily fumbling after the lorgnette which he had dropped. The narrator stopped in astonishment. The alarmed Anna Pavlovna interrupted the description of the delights which the vicomte was depicting with such relish.
“Do not keep us in suspense, vicomte,” she said.
The vicomte smiled.
“Delight reduced hours to minutes, when suddenly there came a ring at the door and the startled maid, trembling, came running in to announce that a terrible Bonapartist Mameluke was ringing and that his appalling master was already standing at the entrance …”
“Charmant, délicieux,” whispered the little Princess Bolkonskaya, jabbing her needle into her embroidery as if to indicate that the fascination and charm of the story had prevented her from continuing her work.
The vicomte acknowledged this mute praise with a grateful smile and was about to continue when a new person entered the drawing room and effected the very pause that was required.
IV
This new person was the young Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband of the little princess. It was clear, not so much from the way the young prince had arrived late and was yet received in the most polite fashion by the hostess, as from the way that he made his entrance, that he was one of those young people who are so pampered by society that they have come to despise it. The young prince, a slightly short but slim man, was extremely handsome, with dark hair and a brownish complexion and a somewhat languorous air; he was dressed with exceptional elegance and had tiny hands and feet. Everything about his appearance, from his bored and weary gaze to his measured saunter, made the sharpest possible contrast to his lively little wife. He was evidently not only acquainted with everyone present in the drawing room, but so sick of them all that he found it utterly tedious even to look at or listen to them, since he knew in advance exactly how everything would go. Of all the people there that he found so very boring, he seemed to find none more so than his own pretty wife. He turned away from her lovely face with a faint, sour grimace that spoiled his handsome features, as if he were thinking: “You were the last thing this company required to make it utterly loathsome to me.”
He kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand with an expression that suggested he would have given God only knew what to be spared this onerous duty and, squinting his eyes till they were almost closed, he surveyed the assembled company.
“You have a large gathering,” he said in a high, thin voice, nodding to one person while proffering his hand to another, holding it out to be shaken.
“You intend to go to the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna.
“General Kutuzóv,” he said, stressing the final syllable, zóff, like a Frenchman, and removing a glove from a perfectly white, tiny hand with which he rubbed his eye, “General-in-Chief Kutuzóv has asked me to be his adjutant.”
“But what about Lise, your wife?”
“She will go to the country.”
“And are you not ashamed to deprive us of your delightful wife?”
The young adjutant puffed out his lips to make a derisive sound of the kind that only the French make, but said nothing.
“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same flirtatious tone in which she addressed strangers, “do come here and sit down and listen to the story the vicomte is telling us about Mademoiselle Georges and Buonaparte.”
Andrei narrowed his eyes and sat down as far away as possible, as though he had not heard his wife.
“Pray continue, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna. “The vicomte was telling us how the Duc d’Enghien visited Mademoiselle Georges,” she added, addressing the new arrival, so that he could follow the continuation of the story.
“The purported rivalry between Buonaparte and the duke over Mademoiselle Georges,” said Prince Andrei in a tone suggesting it was absurd for anyone not to know about that, and he slumped against the armrest of his chair. At this point the young man in spectacles named Monsieur Pierre, who had not taken his delighted, affectionate gaze off Prince Andrei from the moment he entered the drawing room, approached him and grasped him by the arm. Prince Andrei was so incurious that, without even glancing round, he twisted his face into a grimace that expressed annoyance with whoever was touching his epaulette, but on seeing Pierre’s smiling face, Prince Andrei also broke into a smile, and suddenly his entire face was transformed by the kind and intelligent expression that suffused it.
“What’s this? You here, my dear Horse Guard?” the prince asked with delight, but also with a slightly patronising and supercilious inflection.
“I knew that you would be,” replied Pierre. “I’ll come to you for supper,” he added quietly, in order not to disturb the vicomte, who was continuing with his story. “May I?”
“No, you may not,” said Prince Andrei, laughing and turning away, but letting Pierre know with a gentle squeeze of his hand that he need not have asked.
The vicomte was telling them that Mademoiselle Georges had implored the duke to hide, that the duke had said he had never hidden from anyone, and that Mademoiselle Georges had said to him, “Your highness, your sword belongs to the King and to France” and that the duke had after all hidden himself under the laundry in the next room, and that when Napoleon had become unwell, the duke had emerged from under the laundry and seen Buonaparte there before him.
“Charming, quite exquisite!” said a voice among the listeners.
Even Anna Pavlovna, having observed that the most difficult part of the tale had been negotiated successfully, calmed down and was quite able to enjoy the story. The vicomte warmed to his task and, rolling his r’s powerfully, declaimed with the animation of an actor …
“The enemy of his house, the usurper of the throne, the man who stood at the head of his nation, was here, before him, prostrate and motionless on the ground and perhaps at his last gasp. As the great Corneille said: ‘Malicious glee surged in his breast and outraged majesty alone helped him repel it.’”
The vicomte stopped and, as he prepared to proceed with his story with still greater verve, he smiled, as though reassuring the ladies, who were already over-excited. Quite without warning during this pause, the beautiful Princess Hélène looked at her watch, exchanged glances with her father, and the two of them suddenly stood up, their movements disturbing the circle and interrupting the story.
“We shall be late, papa,” she said simply, all the while beaming her smile at everyone.
“Do forgive me, my dear vicomte,” said Prince Vasily to the Frenchman, affectionately tugging him down by the sleeve to prevent him rising from his seat. “These wretched festivities of the ambassador’s deprive me of my pleasure and interrupt you.”
“So awfully sorry to forsake your exquisite soirée,” he said to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Hélène, began making her way between the chairs, gently restraining the folds of her gown, with the smile on her lovely face beaming ever more radiantly.
V
Anna Pavlovna requested the vicomte to wait while she showed Prince Vasily and his daughter out through the next room. The elderly lady who had previously been sitting with the aunt and had then so foolishly expressed her interest in the vicomte’s story, hastily rose to her feet and followed Prince Vasily to the entrance hall.
The former pretence of interest had completely vanished from her face. That kind, tearful face now expressed only anxiety and fear.
“What can you tell me, prince, about my Boris?” she said, as she caught up with him in the hallway (she pronounced the name Boris with a distinctive stress on the “o”). “I cannot stay here in St. Petersburg any longer. Tell me, what news can I bring my poor boy?”
Although Prince Vasily listened to the elderly lady unwillingly, almost impolitely, and even showed his impatience, she smiled at him affectionately and imploringly, and to prevent him leaving took him by the arm.
“What trouble would it be for you to have a word with His Majesty, and he would be directly transferred to the Guards,” she pleaded.
“Believe me, I will do all that I can, princess,” replied Prince Vasily, “but it is difficult for me to ask His Majesty; I would advise you to appeal to Razumovsky through Prince Golitsyn, that would be wiser.”
The elderly lady bore the name of Drubetskaya, one of the finest family names in Russia, but she was poor and, having long since withdrawn from society, she had forfeited her former connections. She had come here now solely to obtain an appointment to the Guards for her only son. It was only in order to see Prince Vasily that she had had herself invited to Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, and it was only for that reason that she had sat listening to the vicomte’s story. She was alarmed at Prince Vasily’s words; her once-beautiful face expressed, for a moment, something close to disdain. She smiled again and clutched Prince Vasily’s arm more tightly.
“Listen, prince,” she said, “I have never once petitioned you for anything and I never will, and I have never once reminded you of my father’s friendship towards you. But now I entreat you in God’s name, do this for my son and I shall regard you as my benefactor,” she added hastily. “No, do not be angry, but promise me. I have asked Golitsyn and he refused. Be the same good fellow you always were,” she said, trying to smile, despite the tears in her eyes.
“Papa, we shall be late,” said Princess Hélène, turning her beautiful head on her classical shoulders as she waited by the door.
Influence in society is capital which, if it is not to diminish, must be protected. Prince Vasily knew this and, realising that if he began asking for everyone who begged him, he would soon be unable to ask for anyone at all, he rarely made use of his influence. In Princess Drubetskaya’s case, however, her renewed appeal prompted something akin to a pang of conscience. She had reminded him of the truth: that he had been obliged to her father for the first steps in his own career. In addition, he could see from her manner that she was one of those women, especially mothers, who, once they have taken an idea into their heads, will never relent until their wishes have been granted, otherwise they are prepared to carry on badgering every day and every minute and even create scenes. It was this final consideration that swayed him.
“My dear Anna Mikhailovna,” he said with the customary familiarity and boredom in his voice, “for me it is almost impossible to do what you wish, but in order to prove to you that I love you and honour the memory of the late count, your father, I shall do the impossible. Your son shall be transferred to the Guards, here is my hand on it. Are you content?”
And he shook her hand, tugging it downwards.
“My dear man, you are my benefactor! I expected nothing less from you,” the mother lied and demeaned herself, “I knew how kind you are.”
He was about to leave.
“Wait, just one more word. Since he will move to the Guards …” she said and stopped short. “You are on good terms with Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov, recommend Boris to him as an adjutant. Then my mind would be at rest, and then …”
Anna Mikhailovna begged, like a gypsy, for her son: the more she was given, the more she wanted. Prince Vasily smiled.
“That I do not promise. You have no idea how Kutuzov has been besieged since he was appointed commander-in-chief. He told me himself that all the ladies of Moscow have conspired to give him their children as adjutants.”
“No, promise me, I shan’t let you go, my dear man, my benefactor …”
“Papa,” the beauty repeated in the same tone as before, “we shall be late.”
“Well, au revoir. You see?”
“Then tomorrow you will put it to His Majesty.”
“Without fail, but concerning Kutuzov I do not promise.”
“No, promise me, promise, Vasily,” Anna Mikhkailovna said as he left, with the smile of a young coquette which once must have been natural to her, but now was quite out of place on her kind, careworn face. She had clearly forgotten her age and sought out of habit to employ all the ancient feminine wiles. But as soon as he went out her face once again assumed the cold, artifical expression it had worn previously. She returned to the circle in which the vicomte was continuing with his story and once again pretended to be listening, waiting until it was time to leave, since her business was already done.
VI
The end of the vicomte’s story went as follows:
“The Duc d’Enghien took out of his pocket a vial of rock crystal mounted in gold which contained the elixir of life given to his father by the Comte St. Germain. This elixir, as is well known, possessed the property of bringing the dead, or the almost dead, back to life, but it was not to be given to anyone but members of the house of Condé. Outsiders who tasted the elixir were cured in the same way as the Condés, but they became implacable enemies of the ducal house. A proof of this can be seen in the fact that the duke’s father, wishing to restore his dying horse, gave it these drops. The horse revived, but several times afterwards it attempted to kill its rider and once during a battle it carried him into the republicans’ camp. The duke’s father killed his beloved horse. In spite of this, the young and chivalrous Duc d’Enghien poured several drops into the mouth of his enemy Buonaparte, and the ogre revived.”
“‘Who are you?’ asked Buonaparte.
“‘A relative of the maid,’ replied the duke.
“‘Lies!’ cried Buonaparte.
“‘General, I am unarmed,’ replied the duke.
“‘Your name?’
“‘I have saved your life,’ replied the duke.
“The duke left, but the elixir took effect. Buonaparte began to feel hatred for the duke and from that day on he swore to destroy the unfortunate and magnanimous youth. Having learned who his rival was from a handkerchief dropped by the duke, which was embroidered with the crest of the house of Condé, Buonaparte ordered his minions to contrive a conspiracy between Pichegru and Georges as a pretext, then had the heroic martyr seized in the dukedom of Baden and killed.
“The angel and the demon. And that was how the most terrible crime in history was committed.”
With this the vicomte concluded his story and swung round on his chair in an excess of agitation. Everyone was silent.
“The murder of the duke was more than a crime, vicomte,” said Prince Andrei, smiling gently, as though he were making fun of the vicomte, “it was a mistake.”
The vicomte raised his eyebrows and spread his arms wide. His gesture could have signified many things.
“But what do you make of the latest farce, of the coronation in Milan?” asked Anna Pavlovna. “In this new farce, the peoples of Genoa and Lucca declare their wishes to Mr. Buonaparte and Mr. Buonaparte sits on a throne and grants the people’s wishes. Oh, it is exquisite! Why, it’s enough to drive one insane. Just imagine, the entire world has lost its wits.”
Prince Andrei turned away from Anna Pavlovna, as if to imply that the talk was leading nowhere.
“God has given me the crown. Woe betide him who touches it,” Prince Andrei declared proudly, as though they were his own words (they were in fact those of Bonaparte when the crown was set upon his head). “They say he looked awfully fine as he pronounced those words,” he added.
Anna Pavlovna glanced sharply at Prince Andrei.
“I hope,” she continued, “that that was the drop which will finally make the glass run over. The sovereigns can no longer tolerate this man who is such a threat to everything.”
“The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,” said the vicomte with courteous despair, “but the sovereigns! What did they do for Louis XVI, for the Queen, for Elizabeth? Nothing!” he continued, growing animated. “And believe me, they are now being punished for their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns? They send their ambassadors to greet this usurper of the throne.”
And with a contemptuous sigh he again shifted his position. At these words Prince Hippolyte, who had been looking at the vicomte through his lorgnette the whole time, suddenly turned his entire body towards the little Princess Bolkonskaya and, after asking her for a needle, began to show her, by drawing with the point on the table, the Condé coat of arms. He expounded it to her with an expression as intent as if the princess had asked him to do it.
“The Condé coat of arms consists of a shield with a staff gules engrailed with a staff azure,” he prattled. The princess listened, smiling.
“If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France for another year,” said the vicomte, continuing the chief conversation with the air of a man who is listening to no one, but merely pursuing his own train of thought on a matter which he knows better than everyone else, “then things will be carried too far by all the intrigues, violence, exiles and executions. Society, I mean good society, French society, will be exterminated for ever, and then what?”
He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands.
“The Emperor Alexander,” said Anna Pavlovna with the melancholy that always accompanied her talk of the imperial family, “has declared that he will allow the French themselves to choose their own form of government. And I think there can be no doubt that, once it is liberated from the usurper, the entire nation will throw itself into the arms of the legitimate King,” said Anna Pavlovna, striving to be as gracious as possible with the émigré and royalist.
“Oh, if only that happy moment could come!” said the vicomte, inclining his head in gratitude for this mark of attention.
“And what do you think, Monsieur Pierre?” Anna Pavlovna sweetly asked the fat young man whose awkward silence was irksome to her as a polite hostess. “What do you think? You have recently come from Paris.”
While waiting for a reply, Anna Pavlovna smiled at the vicomte and the others, as if to say: “I must be polite even with him; you see, I still speak to him, even though I know he has nothing to say.”
VII
“The entire nation will die for its Emperor, for the greatest man in the world!” the young man said suddenly in a loud and vehement voice, without any preamble whatsoever, resembling a young peasant lad fearful of being interrupted and deprived of the opportunity to express himself in full. He glanced round at Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei smiled.
“The greatest genius of our age,” Pierre continued.
“What? That is your opinion? You are joking!” screeched Anna Pavlovna, her fright prompted less by the words that the young man uttered than by the animation, so spontaneous and entirely improper, that was expressed in the full, fleshy features of his face, and still more by the sound of his voice, which was too loud and, above all, too natural. He made no gestures and spoke in short bursts, occasionally adjusting his spectacles and glancing around, but it was clear from his whole appearance that no one could stop him now and he would express his entire view, regardless of the proprieties. The young man was like a wild, unbroken horse who, until saddled and stirrupped, is quiet and even timid and in no way different from other horses, but who, as soon as the harness is put on him, suddenly begins for no clear reason to pull in his head, and rear and buck in the most ludicrous manner possible, without knowing why himself. The young man had evidently sensed the bridle and begun his ludicrous bucking.
“Nobody in France even thinks about the Bourbons nowadays,” he continued hastily, so that no one would interrupt him, and constantly glancing round at Prince Andrei, as though he was the only one from whom he expected encouragement. “Do not forget that it is only three months since I returned from France.”
He spoke in excellent French.
“Monsieur le vicomte is absolutely right to suppose that in a year it will be too late for the Bourbons. It is already too late. There are no more royalists. Some have abandoned their fatherland, others have become Bonapartists. The whole of St. Germain pays homage to the Emperor.”
“There are exceptions,” the vicomte said superciliously.
The worldly, experienced Anna Pavlovna looked anxiously by turns at the vicomte and the improper young man and could not forgive herself for imprudently inviting this youth without first getting to know him.
The improper youth was the illegitimate son of a rich and renowned grandee. Anna Pavlovna had invited him out of respect for his father, bearing in mind also that Monsieur Pierre had just returned from abroad, where he had been educated.
“If only I had known that he was so badly brought up and a bonapartist,” she thought, looking at his big, close-cropped head and his large, fleshy features. “So this is the upbringing they give young men nowadays. You can tell a man of good society straight away,” she said to herself, admiring the vicomte’s composure.
“Almost the entire nobility,” Pierre continued, “has gone over to Bonaparte.”
“So say the Bonapartists,” said the vicomte. “It is hard these days to discover the opinion of the French public.”
“As Bonaparte said,” Prince Andrei began, and involuntarily everyone turned in the direction of his voice, which was low and indolent, but always audible because of its self-assurance, waiting to hear exactly what Bonaparte had said.
“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not want it,’” Prince Andrei continued after a brief silence, again repeating the words of Napoleon. “‘I opened up my ante-chambers and the crowds rushed in.’ I do not know how justified he was in saying that, but it was clever, viciously clever,” he concluded with an acid smile and turned away.
“He did have the right to speak out like that against the royalist aristocracy; it no longer exists in France,” Pierre put in, “or if it does, then it carries no weight. And the people? The people adore the great man, and the people have chosen him. The people are without prejudice; they have seen the greatest genius and hero in the world.”
“He might be a hero to some,” said the vicomte, not replying to the young man and not even looking at him, but addressing Anna Pavlovna and Prince Andrei, “but after the murder of the duke there is one more martyr in heaven and one less hero on earth.”
Anna Pavlovna and the others had no time to appreciate the vicomte’s words before the unbroken horse continued his novel and amusing bucking.
“The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” Pierre continued, “was a state necessity, and I see precisely greatness of soul in the fact that Napoleon was not afraid to take upon himself alone the responsibility for that act.”
“You approve of murder!” Anna Pavlovna exclaimed in a ghastly whisper.
“Monsieur Pierre, how can you see greatness of soul in murder?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her work closer to her.
“Ah! Oh!” said various voices.
“Magnificent,” Prince Hippolyte suddenly said in English, and began slapping his open hand against his knee. The vicomte merely shrugged.
“Is the murder of the duke a good deed or a bad one?” he said, surprising everyone with his high-toned presence of mind. “One or the other …”
Pierre sensed that this dilemma had been posed for him so that if he replied in the negative, they would force him to repudiate his admiration for his hero, but if he replied in the positive, that the deed was a good one, then God alone knew what might happen to him. He replied in the positive, unafraid of what would happen.
“This deed is a great one, like everything that this great man does,” he said audaciously, paying no attention to the horror expressed on all of their faces except the face of Prince Andrei, or to the contemptuous shrugs; he carried on talking on his own, even though his hostess clearly did not wish it. Everyone exchanged glances of amazement as they listened to him, except Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei listened with sympathy and a quiet smile.
“Surely he knew,” continued Pierre, “what a furious storm the death of the duke would stir up against him? He knew that for this one head he would be obliged once again to wage war against the whole of Europe, that he would fight, and would be victorious again, because …”
“Are you Russian?” asked Anna Pavlovna.
“I am. But he will be victorious, because he is a great man. The death of the duke was necessary. He is a genius and the difference between a genius and ordinary people is that he does not act for himself, but for humanity. The royalists wished to inflame once again the internal war and revolution that he had suppressed. He needed domestic peace, and with the execution of the duke he set an example that made the Bourbons stop their intrigues.”
“But, mon cher Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, attempting to overcome him by meekness, “how can you call the means to the restoration of the legitimate throne intrigues?”
“Only the will of the people is legitimate,” he replied, “and they drove out the Bourbons and handed power to the great Napoleon.”
And he looked triumphantly over the top of his spectacles at his listeners.
“Ah! The Social Contract,” the vicomte said in a quiet voice, evidently reassured at having recognised the source from which his opponent’s views were derived.
“Well, after this …!” exclaimed Anna Pavlovna.
But even after this Pierre continued speaking just as uncivilly.
“No,” he said, growing more and more animated, “the Bourbons and the royalists fled from the revolution, they could not understand it. But this man rose above it, and suppressed its abuses while retaining all that is good – the equality of citizens and freedom of speech and of the press, and only because of this did he acquire power.”
“Indeed, but if, having taken power, he had returned it to the rightful king,” said the vicomte ironically, “then I should call him a great man.”
“He could not have done that. The people gave him power only so that he could rid them of the Bourbons, and because the people saw in him a great man. The revolution itself was a great thing,” continued Monsieur Pierre, demonstrating with this audacious and challenging introductory phrase his great youth and desire to express everything as quickly as possible.
“Revolution and regicide are a great thing! After this …”
“I am not talking of regicide. When Napoleon appeared, the revolution had already run its course, and the nation put itself into his hands of its own accord. But he understood the ideas of the revolution and became its representative.”
“Yes, the ideas of plunder, murder and regicide,” the ironic voice interrupted once again.
“Those were the extremes, of course, but that is not what is most important, what is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, the equality of citizens; and Napoleon retained all of these ideas in full force.”
“Liberty and equality,” the vicomte said derisively, as though he had decided finally to demonstrate seriously to this youth the full stupidity of his words. “All high-sounding words which have been compromised long ago. Who does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour preached liberty and equality. But after the revolution were people any happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte is destroying it.”
Prince Andrei looked with a merry smile by turns at Monsieur Pierre, at the vicomte and at his hostess, and evidently found this unexpected and indecorous episode amusing. During the first minute of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna had been horrified, for all her experience of the world, but when she saw that, despite the sacrilegious sentiments expressed by Pierre, the vicomte did not lose his temper, and when she became convinced that it was no longer possible to suppress what was being said, she gathered her strength and joined forces with the vicomte to assail the orator.
“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “how do you explain a great man who was capable of executing a duke or, in the final analysis, simply a man, without a trial and without any proven guilt?”
“I would like to ask,” said the vicomte, “how Monsieur Pierre explains the Eighteenth Brumaire. Surely this is deceit? It is cheap swindling, in no way resembling the conduct of a great man.”
“And the prisoners whom he killed in Africa?” the little princess interjected at the same point. “That is awful.” And she shrugged her little shoulders.
“He is a scoundrel, no matter what you say,” said Prince Hippolyte.
Monsieur Pierre did not know whom to answer, he glanced round at them all and smiled, and the smile exposed his uneven black teeth. His smile was not the same as other people’s, which merge into the absence of a smile. On the contrary, when his smile came, his serious, even rather sullen face instantly disappeared and a different one replaced it; childish, kind, even a little stupid, and seeming to beg forgiveness.
The vicomte, who was seeing him for the first time, realised that this Jacobin was by no means as terrible as the things that he said. Everyone fell silent.
“Well, do you want him to answer everyone at once?” Prince Andrei’s voice rang out. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one should distinguish between the actions of the individual and those of the general or the emperor. So it seems to me.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” put in Pierre, delighted at the support that had been offered him. “As a man, he is great on the Bridge at Arcole, in the hospital in Jaffa, where he offers his hand to victims of the plague, but …”
Prince Andrei, evidently wishing to mitigate the awkwardness caused by Pierre’s oration, half-rose to his feet, preparing to leave and signalling to his wife.
“It is difficult,” he said, “to judge people of our own time, posterity will judge them.”
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte stood up, halting everybody by gesturing with his hands and requesting them to be seated, and began speaking:
“Today I was told a quite charming Moscow anecdote, I simply must regale you with it. I beg your pardon, vicomte, I shall tell it in Russian, otherwise the whole point of the story will be lost.”
And Prince Hippolyte began speaking in Russian with the same accent with which French people who have spent a year in Russia speak. Everyone paused, so keenly and insistently did Prince Hippolyte demand their attention for his story.
“There is à Moscou a certain lady. And she be very mean. She needed have two footmen behind a carriage. And very tall. That was to her taste. And she had chambermaid who was tall also. She said …”
At this point Prince Hippolyte began pondering, evidently struggling to figure something out.
“She said … yes, she said, ‘Girl, put livery on and go with me to carriage to make visits.’”
Then Prince Hippolyte snorted and began to chortle far sooner than his listeners, which was something of a disadvantage to the narrator. However, many of them, including the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did smile.
“She set off. Suddenly strong wind appeared. Girl lose her hat and long hair tumble down all loose …”
Then he could hold out no longer and burst into fitful laughter, and through this laughter he said:
“And so the whole world find out …”
That was how the anecdote ended. Although it was not clear why he told it or why it absolutely had to be told in Russian, Anna Pavlovna and the others were nonetheless grateful for Prince Hippolyte’s courtesy, which had put such an agreeable end to Monsieur Pierre’s disagreeable and discourteous outburst. Following the anecdote the conversation broke up into petty gossip about the next ball and the last, a play, and when and where people would see each other again.
VIII
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soirée, the guests began taking their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Fat and broad, with huge hands that seemed to have been made for swinging one-pood weights, he had no idea, as they say, of how to enter a salon and even less idea of how to leave it, that is, of how to make his farewells and say something particularly agreeable before his exit. In addition, he was absent-minded. As he stood up, instead of taking his own hat he grabbed hold of a three-cornered hat with a general’s panache and held it, tugging at the plume, until the general finally requested him with some animosity, or so it seemed to Pierre, to hand it back. But all of his absent-mindedness and his inability to enter a salon and converse appropriately within it were redeemed by an expression so good-natured and open that, despite all his shortcomings, even those whom he had placed in an embarrassing position could not help finding him likeable. Anna Pavlovna turned towards him and, expressing her forgiveness of his outburst with Christian meekness, nodded to him and said:
“I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
To these words he made no response, but merely bowed and once again displayed to everybody his smile that said nothing, except perhaps this: “Opinions are all very well, but see what a fine, good-natured fellow I am.” And everybody, even Anna Pavlovna, could not help but feel it.
“You know, my dear fellow, your way of thinking tends to raise the roof,” said Prince Andrei, buckling on his sabre.
“I don’t mean it to,” said Pierre, lowering his head, peering over his spectacles and coming to a standstill. “How is it possible to see nothing in either the revolution or Napoleon except the personal interests of the Bourbons? We ourselves do not appreciate how much we are indebted precisely to the revolution …”
Prince Andrei did not wait to hear the end of this discourse. He went out into the entrance hall and, presenting his shoulders to the servant, who threw on his cloak, he lent an indifferent ear to the idle chatter of his wife and Prince Hippolyte, who had also come out into the hallway. Prince Hippolyte was standing beside the delightful pregnant princess and staring hard at her through his lorgnette.
“Go in, Annette, you’ll catch cold,” said the little princess, taking her leave of Anna Pavlovna. “It’s settled,” she added quietly.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to talk over with Lise the putative marriage of Anatole and Lise’s sister-in-law and to request the princess to influence her husband.
“I am relying on you, chère amie,” said Anna Pavlovna, also quietly, “you will write to her and let me know how her father views the matter. Au revoir.” And she left the entrance hall.
Prince Hippolyte moved still closer to the little princess and, leaning his face down to hers, began saying something to her in a half-whisper.
Two servants, one the princess’s and the other his, stood waiting for them to finish talking, holding a shawl and a redingote and listening to their French speech, which they could not understand, but with expressions that suggested they did understand and did not wish to show it. The princess as always smiled as she spoke and laughed as she listened.
“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince Hippolyte, “so boring … An excellent soirée. Was it not, excellent?”
“They say the ball will be very fine,” replied the princess, twitching her lip with the faint moustache. “All the beautiful society ladies will be there.”
“Not all, because you will not be there, not all,” said Prince Hippolyte, laughing gleefully and, seizing the shawl from the manservant, even shoving him back, he began arranging it on the princess. Either out of clumsiness or on purpose, no one could have told which, he did not lower his arms for a long time after putting the shawl in place, and appeared to embrace the young woman.
She moved away from him gracefully, still smiling, turned round and looked at her husband. Prince Andrei’s eyes were closed, he looked tired and sleepy.
“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, running his eye over her. Prince Hippolyte hastily donned his redingote, which in the new style hung below his heels, and ran out, tripping over it, onto the porch after the princess, whom a servant was helping into a carriage.
“Princess, au revoir,” he shouted, tripping over his tongue in the same way as over his feet.
Gathering her skirts, the princess prepared to take her seat in the darkness of the carriage; her husband began adjusting his sabre; Prince Hippolyte, on the pretext of being helpful, kept getting in everyone’s way.
“Permit me, sir,” said Prince Andrei in Russian to Prince Hippolyte, who was preventing him from passing.
This “permit me, sir” had a ring of such cold contempt that Prince Hippolyte hastily stepped aside and began apologising and swaying agitatedly from one foot to the other, as though in pain from some fresh wound, still raw and smarting.
“I’m expecting you, Pierre,” said Prince Andrei’s voice.
The postillion set off with the carriage wheels rumbling. Prince Hippolyte laughed fitfully as he stood on the porch, waiting for the vicomte, whom he had promised to drive home …
“Eh bien, mon cher, your little princess is very nice, very nice,” said the vicomte after he and Hippolyte had got into their carriage. “Mais très bien.” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “And perfectly French.” Hippolyte snorted and began laughing. “And you know, you are quite terrible, with your innocent ways,” the vicomte continued. “I pity the poor husband, this poor little officer posturing as some ruling prince.”
Hippolyte snorted again and said through his laughter:
“And you said that Russian ladies were not as good as French. You just need to know how to go about it.”
IX
Reaching the house first, Pierre, as if he lived there, went through into Prince Andrei’s study and immediately, as was his habit, lay on the divan, taking down the first book he came across on the shelf (it was Caesar’s Commentaries) and, leaning on his elbows, set about reading it from the middle with as much interest as if he had been immersed in it for some two hours. As soon as Prince Andrei arrived he went straight through to his dressing room, emerging into the study five minutes later.
PIERRE BEZUKHOV Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_98033372-4287-5dfa-94f2-a6a62c68d2e4)
“What did you do to Madame Scherer? She’ll now fall quite seriously ill,” he said to Pierre in Russian with a protective, cheerful and amicable smile as he came in, now dressed in a heavy velvet smoking jacket, rubbing his small white hands, which he had evidently just washed once again.
Pierre swung his whole body round, making the divan creak, and turned his eager face to Prince Andrei, who was shaking his head.
Pierre nodded guiltily.
“I didn’t wake up until three. Would you believe that we drank eleven bottles between the five of us?” (Pierre always addressed Prince Andrei formally, while the prince spoke to him in a more informal manner. This was a habit they had acquired as children, and it had never changed.) “Such splendid fellows. That Englishman’s a marvel!”
“That’s one pleasure I have never understood,” said Prince Andrei.
“What are you saying? You are a quite different kind of person, remarkable in every way,” Pierre said sincerely.
“At our dear Anatoly Kuragin’s place again?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t think why you associate with that trash!”
“But he really is a fine chap.”
“He’s trash!” Prince Andrei said curtly and frowned. “Hippolyte is a very bright boy, though, isn’t he?” he added.
Pierre laughed, setting his entire body shaking so that the divan began creaking again. “In Moscou there is a certain lady,” he mimicked through his laughter.
“But you know, he really is a good chap,” the prince interceded for Hippolyte. “Well then, have you finally decided on anything? Are you going to be a Horse Guard or a diplomat?”
Pierre sat up on the divan, drawing his legs under him.
“Can you imagine, I still don’t know? I don’t like either choice!”
“But you have to decide on something, don’t you? Your father’s waiting.”
At the age of ten Pierre had been sent abroad with his tutor, an abbot, and had stayed there until he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow, his father had dismissed the abbot and told the young man: “Now go to St. Petersburg, take a look around, get to know people and think about which path to choose. I agree to anything. Here is a letter for you to Prince Vasily, and here is money. Write to me about everything, I will help you with everything.” Pierre had been trying to choose a career for three months now, and he had still got nowhere. This was the choice which Prince Andrei had mentioned to him. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“I understand military service, but explain this to me,” he said. “Why are you – you understand everything – why are you going to this war, against whom, after all? Against Napoleon and France. If it were a war for liberty, I would understand, I would be the first to join the army, but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world … I do not understand how you can go.”
“You must see, mon cher,” Prince Andrei began, perhaps unwittingly wishing to conceal his own vagueness of thought from himself, suddenly beginning to speak in French and changing his former sincere tone for a formal and cold one, “one can take an entirely different point of view on this question.”
And, as though everything he mentioned were his own personal business or that of his intimate acquaintances, he proceeded to expound to Pierre the view then current in the highest circles of St. Petersburg society of the political mission of Russia in Europe at that time.
Since the revolution Europe had been plagued by wars. The cause of the wars, apart from Napoleon’s ambition, stemmed from an imbalance of power in Europe. One great power was needed to take the matter in hand with strict impartiality and, through alliances, to define new state boundaries and establish a new balance of power in Europe together with a new people’s law, by virtue of which war would become impossible and all misunderstandings between states would be settled by mediation. Russia had taken this selfless role upon herself in the forthcoming war. Russia would seek only to return France to its boundaries of 1796, allowing the French themselves to choose their own form of government, and also to restore the independence of Italy, the Cisalpine kingdom, the new state of the two Belgiums and the new German Alliance, and even to restore Poland.
Pierre listened attentively, several times respectfully restraining his impulse to contradict his friend.
“Do you see that this time we are not being as foolish as we seem?” Prince Andrei concluded.
“Yes, yes, but why won’t they propose this plan to Napoleon himself?” Pierre exclaimed. “He would be the first to accept it, if this plan were sincere: he would understand and love any great idea.”
Prince Andrei paused and rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“And apart from that, I am going …” He stopped. “I am going because the life that I lead here, this life – does not suit me!”
“Why not?” Pierre asked in amazement.
“Because, my dearest friend,” said Prince Andrei, standing up with a smile, “for the vicomte and Hippolyte to wander from one drawing room to the next and mull over nonsense and tell fairytales about Mademoiselle Georges or about some ‘girl’ is all well and good, but that role will not do for me. I cannot stand it any longer,” he added.
Pierre’s glance expressed his agreement.
“But here’s another thing. Why is Kutuzov important? And what does it mean to be an adjutant?” asked Pierre with that rare naïvety possessed by some young people who are not afraid of exposing their ignorance with a question.
“You’re the only person who could possibly not know that,” Prince Andrei replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Kutuzov is Suvorov’s right hand, the best Russian general.”
“But how can you be an adjutant? Doesn’t that mean they can order you about?”
“Of course, an adjutant’s influence is absolutely insignificant,” Prince Andrei replied, “but I have to make a start. Besides, it is what my father wanted. I shall ask Kutuzov to give me a unit. And then we shall see …”
“It will be strange, it’s bound to be, for you to fight against Napoleon,” said Pierre, as though assuming that as soon as Prince Andrei reached the war he would have to engage, if not in single-handed combat, then at least in very close action against Napoleon himself.
Prince Andrei smiled pensively at his own thoughts, twisting the wedding ring on his third finger with a graceful, effeminate gesture.
X
A woman’s dress rustled in the next room. As if he had just woken up, Prince Andrei shook himself and his face assumed the expression it had worn in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room. Pierre lowered his feet from the divan. The princess came in. She was wearing a different dress, more homely but just as elegant and fresh. Prince Andrei stood up and courteously moved up an armchair for her by the fireplace, but there was such intense boredom on his face as he did so, the princess would surely have taken offence, had she been able to see it.
“Why, I often wonder,” she began, as always in French, as she hastily seated herself in the armchair, “why did Annette never marry? How foolish you all are, gentlemen, for not marrying her. Forgive my saying so, but you understand nothing at all about women.”
Pierre and Prince Andrei involuntarily exchanged glances and said nothing. But neither their glance nor their silence embarrassed the princess in the least. She carried on prattling in the same way as before.
“What a wrangler you are, Monsieur Pierre,” she said to the young man. “What a wrangler you are, Monsieur Pierre,” she repeated, fussily settling herself into the large armchair.
Folding her little hands over the mound of her waist, she stopped talking, evidently intent on listening. Her face assumed that distinctive, serious expression in which the eyes seem to be gazing inwards – an expression that only pregnant women have.
“I keep arguing with your husband as well; I cannot understand why he wants to go to war,” said Pierre, addressing the princess without a trace of the inhibition so usual in relations between a young man and a young woman.
The princess started. Apparently Pierre’s words had touched a sore spot.
“Ah, that is just what I say!” she said with her society smile. “I do not understand, I absolutely do not understand, why men cannot live without war. Why is it that we women do not want anything, do not need anything? Why you, you can be the judge. I keep telling him: here he is my uncle’s adjutant, a most brilliant position. Everybody knows him so well and appreciates him so. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard one lady ask: ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrei?’ On my word of honour.”
She laughed.
“He is asked everywhere. He could quite easily be an aide-de-camp … Do you know that only two days ago His Majesty spoke to him most graciously? Annette and I were saying how very easy it would be to arrange. What do you think?”
Pierre looked at Prince Andrei and, noticing that his friend did not like this conversation, made no reply.
“When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t talk of our leaving, don’t even mention it! I don’t wish to hear of it,” said the princess in the same skittish, capricious manner in which she had spoken with Hippolyte in the drawing room, and which was so obviously unsuited to a family circle of which Pierre was ostensibly a member.
“Today, when I thought about having to break off all these dear, precious connections … And then, you know, Andrei.”
She blinked significantly at her husband.
“I’m afraid, I’m so afraid!” she whispered, quivering all the way down her back.
Her husband looked at her as though he were surprised to have noticed that there was someone else apart from Pierre and himself in the room; however, he enquired of the princess with cold civility:
“What are you afraid of, Lise? I can’t understand it,” he said.
“See what egoists all men are! All, all of them egoists! Out of nothing but his own whimsy, God only knows why, he is abandoning me, shutting me away alone in the country.”
“With my father and sister, do not forget,” Prince Andrei said quietly.
“All the same alone, without my friends … And he does not want me to be afraid.” Her tone was peevish now, her short little lip was raised, lending her face an expression that was not joyful, but feral, squirrel-like. She stopped speaking, as if she found it improper to talk of her future delivery in front of Pierre, while this was in fact the very essence of the matter.
“Even so, I do not understand what you are afraid of,” Prince Andrei enunciated slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on his wife.
The princess blushed and fluttered her hands in despair.
“No, Andrei, it’s just as I said: you have changed so much, so very much.”
“Your doctor says you should go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrei. “You ought to go to bed.”
The princess said nothing, and suddenly her short lip with the faint moustache began trembling. Prince Andrei stood up and, with a shrug of his shoulders, began pacing around the room.
Pierre gazed through his spectacles in naïve surprise, first at one, then at the other and began fidgeting on the spot, as if he kept wanting to get up and then changing his mind.
“What does it matter to me that Monsieur Pierre is here,” the little princess said suddenly, and her pretty face suddenly dissolved into a tearful, unlovely grimace. “I have wanted to ask you for a long time, Andrei: What has made you change so much towards me. What have I done to you? You are going to the army, you have no pity for me. Why?”
“Lise!” was all that Prince Andrei said, but the word expressed both supplication and threat and also, above all, the assurance that she would regret what she had said; but she continued hastily:
“You treat me like a sick woman or a child. I see everything. You were not like this six months ago, were you?”
“Lise, will you please stop this,” said Prince Andrei even more emphatically.
Pierre, who had become more and more agitated in the course of this conversation, stood up and walked across to the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of her tears and was ready to start crying himself.
“Calm down, princess. It only seems like that to you, because, I assure you, I myself have experienced … the reason … because … No, I beg your pardon, this is no place for an outsider … Please, calm down … Goodbye … Please excuse me …”
He bowed, preparing to leave. Prince Andrei took his arm and stopped him.
“No, wait, Pierre. The princess is so kind, she would not wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“Yes, he thinks only of himself,” said the princess, making no effort to restrain her angry tears.
“Lise,” Prince Andrei said coldly, raising his tone of voice to a level that indicated his patience had been exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression on the princess’s beautiful little face was replaced by an expression of fearful appeal that aroused compassion; she cast her husband a sullen glance out of her lovely eyes, and her face assumed the timid expression of a dog rapidly but feebly wagging its lowered tail in a confession of guilt.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” said the princess and, gathering up the folds of her dress in one hand, she went up to her husband and kissed him on his brown forehead.
“Bon soir, Lise,” said Prince Andrei, rising and kissing her hand courteously, as though it were a stranger’s.
XI
The friends were silent. Neither said a word. Pierre kept glancing at Prince Andrei; Prince Andrei rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“Let’s go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, getting up and moving towards the door.
They entered a dining room newly decorated in an elegant and rich style. Everything, from the napkins to the silver, porcelain and crystal, bore the special imprint of that newness and elegance which distinguish the household of a young married couple. In the middle of supper Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the table and, like a man who has held something in his heart for a long time and suddenly decides to speak out, he began talking with an air of nervous irritation that Pierre had never seen in his friend before.
“Never, never marry, my friend, that is my advice to you, do not marry until you can tell yourself that you have done everything that you could, and until you have stopped loving the woman that you have chosen, until you can see her clearly, or you will commit a grievous and fatal error. Marry as an old man no longer good for anything … Or everything that is fine and exalted in you will be destroyed. It will all be frittered away on trifles. Yes, yes, yes! Do not look at me with such amazement. If you expect anything of yourself in the future, then you will feel at every step that for you everything is over, all doors are closed, except to the drawing room, where you will stand on the same level as the household flunkey and the idiot … I tell you!”
He gestured emphatically with his hand.
Pierre removed his spectacles, which changed the expression of his face, making his kindness even more obvious, and looked at his friend in surprise.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrei, “is a lovely woman. She is one of those rare women with whom one need not be concerned for one’s honour; but, my God, what would I not give now not to be married! You are the only person I have told about this, because I am so fond of you.”
As he said this Prince Andrei resembled even less than before the gentleman who had sprawled in Anna Pavlovna’s armchair, narrowing his eyes as he pronounced French phrases through clenched teeth. Every muscle in his lean, brownish face was quivering in nervous animation; his eyes, in which the fire of life had earlier seemed extinguished, now glowed brightly, glinting and glittering. It was clear that the more listless he seemed at ordinary times, the more intensely energetic he was at such moments of almost morbid agitation.
“You don’t understand why I say that,” he went on. “It’s an entire life story. You talk about Bonaparte and his career,” he said, although Pierre had not even mentioned Bonaparte. “You talk about Bonaparte, but Bonaparte graduated from a course at the artillery college and went out into the world when there was war and the road to glory was open to everyone.”
Pierre looked at his friend, clearly prepared in advance to agree with whatever he might say.
“Bonaparte went out into the world and immediately found the place he was meant to occupy. And who were his friends? Who was Josephine Beauharnais? My five years of life since I left the Corps de Pages have been nothing but drawing rooms, balls, illicit affairs, idleness. Now I am setting out to war, to the greatest war that there has ever been, and I know nothing and am good for nothing. I am amiable and sharp-tongued, and I am listened to at Anna Pavlovna’s, but I have forgotten what I used to know. I have only just begun to read, but it is all a jumble. And there can be no soldier without knowledge of military history, mathematics and fortifications. And this stupid society, without which my wife cannot live, and these women … I have known success in high society. The most exquisite of women have flung themselves at me. But if you could only know what all these exquisite women are like, and women in general! My father is right. He says that nature is not all-wise, because she was unable to devise a means for the propagation of humankind without woman. Egotism, vanity, stupidity, pettiness in all things – that is all women for you when they show themselves as they are. Look at them in society and there seems to be something to them, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing! No, do not marry, my dear friend, do not marry,” Prince Andrei concluded, and he shook his head as emphatically as if everything he had said were a truth that no one could possibly doubt.
“I think it is funny,” said Pierre, “that you regard yourself, yourself as unqualified, and your life as a spoiled life. You have everything, everything ahead of you. And you …”
He did not say what it was Andrei did, but his tone alone revealed how highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected from him in the future.
In the very best, the most friendly and direct of relationships, flattery or compliments are necessary, as grease is needed to make wheels turn.
“I’m a failure,” said Prince Andrei, but from the proud way in which he raised his handsome head so high and the bright gleam in his eyes, it was clear how little he believed in what he had said. “But why bother talking about me? Let’s talk about you,” he said, pausing for a moment and smiling at his own consoling thoughts. That smile was instantly reflected on Pierre’s face.
“Why bother talking about me?” said Pierre, extending his mouth into a carefree, jolly smile. “What am I? I am an illegitimate son.”
And suddenly, for the first time in the whole evening, he blushed a deep crimson. It had obviously cost him a great effort to say that. “With no name and no fortune. But what of it, it is really …”
But he did not say what it really was.
“I am free for the time being, and I like it. I simply do not know what I ought to start doing. I wanted to ask your serious advice.”
Prince Andrei looked at him with kindly eyes. But even so his friendly and affectionate glance expressed an awareness of his own superiority.
“You are dear to me, especially because, in the whole of our high society, you are the only person who is alive. You’re fortunate. Choose whatever you like, it doesn’t matter. You will always fit in anywhere, but just one thing: stop going to see these Kuragins, leading that kind of life. It doesn’t suit you at all: all this bingeing and playing the hussar, and all the rest of it.”
“Do you know what,” said Pierre, as if a happy thought had just occurred to him, “seriously, I’ve been thinking that for a long time. Living like that I cannot make decisions, or think anything through. My head hurts, I have no money. He invited me today, I shan’t go.”
“Give me your word, your word of honour, that you won’t go!”
“Word of honour.”
“Make sure, now.”
“Of course.”
XII
It was after one in the morning when Pierre left his friend’s house. It was a bright St. Petersburg June night. Pierre got into a cabby’s carriage with the intention of going home. But the closer he came, the more strongly he felt the impossibility of getting to sleep on this night that was more like an evening or a morning. He could see for a long way in the empty streets. He pictured Prince Andrei’s animated, handsome face and heard his words – not about his relations with his wife (that did not interest Pierre) – but his words about the war and the future life that might await his friend. Pierre loved and admired his friend so unconditionally that he could not accept that, the moment Prince Andrei desired it, everyone would not acknowledge him as a remarkable and great man, whose nature was to command, not to obey. Pierre simply could not imagine that anyone at all, even Kutuzov, for instance, would have the courage to issue commands to a man so evidently born to take the leading role in everything as he conceived Prince Andrei to be. He imagined his friend before the assembled troops, on a white steed, with a terse, forceful speech on his lips; he imagined his courage, his successes, his heroism and everything that most young men imagine for themselves. Pierre recalled that he had promised to repay a small gambling debt today to Anatoly, at whose house the usual company of gamblers had been due to gather that evening.
“Go to Kuragin’s,” he said to the driver, thinking only of where he could spend the remainder of the night, and completely forgetting the promise he had given Prince Andrei not to visit Kuragin.
On arriving at the porch of the large house in which Anatole Kuragin lived beside the Cavalry Guards barracks, he recalled his promise, but immediately, as happens with those people who are described as lacking in character, he wanted desperately to go in and take another glance at that dissolute life with which he was so familiar and so bored, and the thought came to him of itself that the promise he had given did not mean anything and, moreover, he had also promised Anatoly, before Prince Andrei, that he would bring the money he owed: finally, he thought that all these words of honour were mere conventions, without any definite meaning, especially if you realised that tomorrow perhaps he would die or something so unusual would happen to him that nothing would be honourable or dishonourable any longer.
He walked up to the well-lit porch, on up the stairs and went in through an open door. There was nobody in the sumptuous entrance hall, but there were empty bottles lying about, a heap of bent playing-cards in the corner, cloaks and galoshes; there was a smell of wine; he could hear talking and shouting in the distance.
Evidently the gambling and supper were already over, but the guests had not yet departed. Pierre took off his cloak and went into the first room, in the centre of which there stood a life-size statue of a racehorse. Here he could hear the racket from the next room more clearly, the familiar sound of six or eight men laughing and shouting. He went into the next room, where the remains of supper were still on the table. About eight young men, all without frock coats and mostly in military riding breeches, were crowding around an open window and all shouting incomprehensibly in Russian and French.
“I bet a hundred with Chaplin!” shouted one.
“Make sure you don’t support him!” shouted another.
“I’m for Dolokhov!” shouted a third. “Part our hands, Kuragin!”
“All in one breath, or you’ve lost!” shouted a fourth.
“Yakov, let’s have the bottle, Yakov!” shouted the master of the house, a tall, statuesquely handsome fellow standing in the middle of the crowd. “Stop, gentlemen. Here he is, Pierre!”
“Ah! Pyotr! Petrusha! Peter the Great!”
“Peter the Stout!” everybody began shouting from every side, crowding round him.
Every one of the red or blotchy young faces expressed delight at the sight of Pierre, who removed his spectacles and wiped them as he looked at all this crowd.
“I don’t understand a thing. What’s going on?” he asked with a good-humoured smile.
“Stop, he’s not drunk. Give me a bottle,” said Anatole, and taking a glass from the table, he went up to Pierre.
“First of all, drink.”
Pierre began drinking glass after glass without speaking, peering out from under his brows at the drunken guests, who had crowded round the window again, discussing something that he did not understand. He drank one glass at a gulp; Anatole poured him another with a meaningful expression. Pierre drank it resignedly, but more slowly than the first. Anatole poured a third. Pierre drank that one too, although he paused twice in order to catch his breath. Anatole stood beside him, gazing by turns with his beautiful, big eyes at the glass, the bottle and Pierre. Anatole was a handsome fellow: tall and full-bodied, white-skinned and ruddy-cheeked; he had such a high chest that his head was inclined backwards, which gave him a haughty air. He had a lovely fresh mouth, thick light-brown hair, slanting black eyes and a general appearance of strength, health and the good nature of vivacious youth. But his beautiful eyes with the wonderful, regular black brows seemed to have been made less for looking than for being looked at. They seemed incapable of changing their expression. It was only clear that he was drunk from his red face, and even more so from his unnaturally out-thrust chest and the wide stare of his eyes. Even though he was drunk and the upper half of his mighty body was clad in nothing but a shirt open at the chest, from the faint aroma of perfume and soap which surrounded him, mingling with the smell of the wine he had drunk, from his hairstyle, painstakingly pomaded in place that morning, from the elegant cleanness of his plump hands and superbly fine linen, from that distinctive whiteness and delicate smoothness of his skin, the aristocrat was apparent even in his present condition, by virtue of the habit, acquired in childhood, of painstaking and lavish care for his own person.
“Come on, drink it all! Eh!” he said seriously, handing Pierre the last glass.
“No, I don’t want to,” said Pierre, faltering halfway through the glass. “Well, what’s going on?” he added with the expression of a man who has fulfilled his initial obligation and believes that he now has the right to join in the common pursuit.
“Drink it all, eh?” Anatole repeated, opening his eyes wider, lifting the unfinished glass in his white hand, his arm bared to the elbow. He had the look of a man doing something important, because at that moment he was focusing all his energy on holding the glass straight and saying exactly what he wanted to say.
“I told you, I don’t want to,” replied Pierre, putting on his spectacles and walking away.
“What are you shouting about?” he asked the crowd that had gathered round the window. Anatole stood and thought for a moment, handed the glass to a servant and, smiling with his lovely mouth, also went over to the window.
On Fridays Anatole Kuragin received everyone at his home, they played cards and ate supper there, then spent most of the night out. On that day the session of faro had developed into a protracted game for high stakes. Anatole had lost a little, and since he had no passion for gambling, but played out of habit, he had soon dropped out. One rich man, a life-hussar, had lost a lot, and one Semyonovsky Regiment officer, Dolokhov, had won from everyone. After the game they had sat down to supper very late. An extremely serious Englishman, who described himself as a traveller, had said that he had been given to believe that Russians drank far more heavily than he discovered they actually did. He had said that in Russia they drank nothing but champagne, but if they would drink rum, then he proposed a wager that he would drink more than anyone else present. Dolokhov, the officer who had won more than everyone else that evening, had said it wasn’t worth making a wager simply on a bottle of rum, and he had offered to drink the whole bottle without taking it from his lips, and also while sitting on the second-floor window-ledge with his legs dangling outside. The Englishman had proposed the wager. Anatole had accepted the wager for Dolokhov, that is, that Dolokhov would drink the full bottle of rum sitting on the ledge. Pierre came in just when the servants were starting to remove the frame that prevented anyone from sitting on the outside window-ledge. The second-storey window was high enough for someone falling from it to be killed. Drunken and amicable faces on all sides kept telling Pierre what was going on, as if it were particularly important for Pierre to know the state of affairs. Dolokhov was an officer in a Guards infantry regiment, of medium height, sinewy and solidly built, with a broad, full chest, extremely curly hair and light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers, he wore no moustache, and his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was fully visible. It was an extremely agreeable mouth, despite the fact that it almost never smiled. The lines of this mouth were curved with remarkable subtlety. At its centre the upper lip pressed down vigorously on the firm lower one; sharp folds in the corners constantly formed something like two smiles, one on each side, and all of this, together with a direct, somewhat insolent, but ardent and intelligent gaze, produced such an extraordinary impression it made people wonder about the owner of such a beautiful and strange face. Women liked Dolokhov, and he was fully convinced there was no such thing as a woman whose character was entirely above reproach.
Dolokhov was a young man of good family, but not rich, although he lived extravagantly and gambled constantly. He almost always won; but no one, not even in his absence, dared to attribute his constant success to anything other than good luck, a clear mind and indomitable will-power. In their hearts, everyone who gambled with him assumed he was a card-sharp, although they did not dare to say so. Now, when he had proposed his strange wager, the drunken company took an especially keen interest in what he intended to do, precisely because those who knew him knew that he would do what he had said. Pierre also knew it and that was the only reason why he greeted Dolokhov without attempting to raise any objection to his intentions.
The rest of the company consisted of three officers, the Englishman, who had been seen in St. Petersburg in the most diverse circles, and a certain Moscow gambler, a fat married man who was much older than everyone else, and yet was on familiar terms with all these young people.
The bottle of rum had been brought; the frame that prevented anyone sitting on the sloping ledge of the window was being broken out by two servants in gaiters and kaftans, who were clearly working in haste, feeling intimidated by the shouted advice from the gentlemen surrounding them.
With his chest thrust out, his expression unchanging, neither walking round the others nor asking them to make way, Anatole forced his strong body through the crowd at the window, went up to the frame, wrapped both his white hands in a frock coat that was lying on a divan, and struck at the panes of glass, breaking them out.
“Now now, your excellency,” said a servant, “you’re only getting in the way and you’ll cut your hands.”
“Get out of it, you fool, eh?” said Anatole. He took hold of the crossbeam of the frame and began pulling. Several other hands also joined in; they pulled, and the frame sprang out of the window with a crack, so that those pulling it almost fell over.
“Out with it all, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dolokhov.
“Listen,” Anatole said to Pierre. “You understand? The Englishman’s boasting … eh? … National pride? … Eh? … All right? …”
“All right,” said Pierre, gazing with a sinking heart at Dolokhov as, grasping the bottle of rum in his hands, he approached the window, through which could be seen the light of the sky, where dawn and dusk were merging. Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt purposefully after sticking the bottle of rum in his pocket, Dolokhov leapt smartly up to the window.
“Listen!” he shouted, standing on the sill and addressing the room.
Everybody stopped talking.
“I wager” (he spoke in French so that the Englishman would understand him, but he did not speak that language too well) “I wager fifty imperials … Want to make it a hundred?” he added, addressing the Englishman.
“No, fifty,” said the Englishman.
“All right, fifty imperials, that I will drink this whole bottle of rum without lifting it from my lips, and that I’ll drink it sitting outside the window, on this spot here” (he leaned out and pointed to the jutting slope of the wall outside the window) “and without holding on … Right?”
“Very good,” said the Englishman.
Anatole turned towards the Englishman and, grabbing him by the button of his tailcoat and looking down on him from above (the Englishman was short), he began explaining in English what was already clear to everyone.
“Stop!” cried Dolokhov, banging the bottle against the side of the window to draw attention to himself. “Stop, Kuragin, listen. If anyone else does the same, then I pay a hundred imperials. Understand?”
The Englishman nodded, without making it at all clear whether he intended to accept this new wager. Anatole kept hold of the Englishman and even though the latter tried to convey by nodding that he had understood everything, Anatole translated Dolokhov’s words into English for him. A young, skinny boy, a life-hussar who had lost that evening, climbed up into the window, stuck his head out and looked down.
“Oooh …” he exclaimed, looking out and down through the window to the stone of the pavement.
“Attention!” yelled Dolokhov and jerked the officer out of the window. He jumped awkwardly back down into the room, tripping over his tangled spurs.
Setting the bottle on the window-ledge so it would be easy to pick up, Dolokhov climbed cautiously and carefully out of the window. Lowering his legs and wedging himself against the sides of the window with both hands, he shifted his position, settled himself, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right, then to the left and took hold of the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and set them on the windowsill, although it was already quite light. Dolokhov’s back in the white shirt and his curly head were lit up from both sides. Everybody was crowding round the window. The Englishman was standing at the front. Pierre was smiling without speaking. The old Muscovite, his face frightened and angry, suddenly pushed forward, trying to grab Dolokhov by the shirt.
“Gentlemen, this is stupidity, he’ll fall and be killed,” he said. Anatole stopped him.
“Don’t touch him, you’ll startle him, he’ll be killed. Eh? … What then? … Eh?”
Dolokhov looked round, adjusting his position and once again wedging himself with his hands. His face was neither pale nor red, but cold and angry.
“If anyone tries to meddle again,” he said, uttering each word separately through thin, compressed lips, “I’ll chuck him down there right now. It’s slippery enough to slide right off, but he interferes with his stupid nonsense … Right!”
After saying “Right!” he turned back again, lowered his hands, picked up the bottle and raised it to his mouth, tilting his head back and throwing his free hand upwards for balance. One of the servants, who had begun clearing up the broken glass, stopped in a bent-over position with his eyes fixed on the window and Dolokhov’s back. Anatole stood up straight, his eyes wide open. The Englishman pursed his lips and watched from the side. The old Muscovite fled into the corner of the room and lay down on a divan with his face to the wall. Some stood still with their mouths open, some with their hands raised. Pierre covered his face, where a faint, forgotten smile still lingered, although it now expressed horror and fear. Nobody said a word. Pierre took his hands away from his eyes; Dolokhov was sitting in the same position, but his head was tilted right back so that the curly hair at the back touched the collar of his shirt and the hand holding the bottle was rising higher and higher, shuddering with the effort. The bottle was clearly emptying and at the same time rising higher, as his head tilted back. “What is taking so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had gone by. Suddenly Dolokhov leaned backwards bodily and his hand began shaking nervously: this shuddering was enough to shift his whole body sitting on the steep slope. He changed position and his hands and head began to shake even more strongly from the effort. One hand was raised to grab hold of the windowsill, but then lowered again. Pierre closed his eyes and told himself that he would not open them again. Suddenly he sensed everything around him beginning to stir. He peeped: Dolokhov was standing on the windowsill, his face pale and elated.
DOLOKHOV’S WAGER WITH THE ENGLISHMAN Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_a6d8f629-bfe0-5b4a-a76c-97b278d89ee5)
“Empty!”
He tossed the bottle to the Englishman, who deftly caught it. Then Dolokhov jumped down from the window. He smelled strongly of rum.
“Eh? How’s that? Eh?” Anatole asked everybody. “What a splendid trick!”
“To hell with the lot of you!” said the old Muscovite. The Englishman had taken out his purse and was counting out the money. Dolokhov was scowling in silence. Pierre, in a bewildered state, walked around the room, smiling and breathing heavily.
“Gentlemen, who wishes to wager with me? I’ll do the same,” he suddenly blurted out. “And I don’t even need a wager, so there. Tell them to give me a bottle. I’ll do it … tell them.”
“What are you saying? Have you lost your mind? Who’s going to let you? You get dizzy on the stairs,” voices said on every side.
“It was mean of us to leave Dolokhov to sacrifice his life alone. I’ll drink it, let me have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, hammering on the table with a determined, drunken gesture, and he started clambering up to the window. They grabbed him by the arms and led him off to the next room. But Dolokhov was unable to walk; they carried him over to a divan and doused his head with cold water.
Someone wanted to go home, someone suggested not going home but on to somewhere else, all of them together: Pierre insisted on this more than anyone. They put on their cloaks and set off. The Englishman went home and Dolokhov fell into a half-dead, insensible sleep on Anatole’s divan.
XIII
Prince Vasily kept the promise that he had made to the elderly woman at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée who had petitioned him about her only son Boris. His Majesty was informed of him and, unlike other young men, he was transferred to the Semyonovsky Guards regiment as an ensign. But Boris was not appointed an adjutant or attached to Kutuzov, for all Anna Mikhailovna’s soliciting and scheming. Shortly after Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, Anna Mikhailovna went back to Moscow, straight to her rich relatives the Rostovs, with whom she stayed in Moscow and in whose house her adored little Borenka had been educated since he was a child and had lived for years. Now, though he had only just been taken into the army, he had immediately been made a Guards ensign. The Guards had already left St. Petersburg on the 10th of August and her son, who had remained in Moscow to be fitted for his uniform, was due to catch them up on the road to Radzivilov.
It was the name-day of two members of the Rostov family – the mother and her youngest daughter, both called Natalya. All morning, teams of horses had been constantly driving up and away, bringing well-wishers to Countess Rostova’s large house on Povarskaya Street, which was known to the whole of Moscow. The countess and her elder daughter sat in the drawing room with the guests, who endlessly came and went. The countess was a woman with a thin, oriental-looking face, about forty-five years old, clearly exhausted by her children, of whom she had had twelve. A slowness in her movements and speech, due to her frailty, lent her a grave air that inspired respect. As part of the household, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya sat beside her, helping with the business of receiving the guests and engaging them in conversation. The young people were in the back rooms, feeling no need to participate in the receiving of visits. The count was greeting and seeing off the guests and inviting them to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful, ma chère or mon cher” (he said ma chère or mon cher to everyone without exception, making not the slightest distinction between people of higher or lower standing than himself), “for myself and for my dear name-day girls. Be sure to come for dinner, now. I cordially invite you on behalf of the whole family, ma chère.”
He spoke these words to everyone without exception or variation, with an identical expression on his plump, jolly, clean-shaven face, and with an identically firm handshake and repeated short bows. After seeing off one guest, the count went back to another who was still in the drawing room: drawing up an armchair and with the air of a man who likes and knows how to enjoy life, rakishly planting his feet wide apart and setting his hands on his knees, he swayed impressively, ventured conjectures concerning the weather and consulted people about his health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very bad but self-assured French, then once again, with the air of a man who is tired but resolute in the fulfilment of his duty, went to see the guest off, arranging the sparse grey hairs on his bald patch, and once again invited the guest to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the hallway he went via the conservatory and the footmen’s room to look into the large marble hall, where they were laying the table for eighty places and, looking at the footmen carrying the silver and porcelain, extending the tables and spreading out the damask tablecloths, he called over Dmitri Vasilievich, the nobleman’s son who managed all his affairs and said:
“Right, Mitenka, now you make sure everything is all right. Good, good,” he said, surveying with satisfaction the huge extended table. “And don’t forget the order of the wines; the whole thing is in the serving. See to it …” And he walked away, sighing complacently, back to the drawing room.
“Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!” the countess’s huge footman announced in a deep bass as he stepped through the doors of the drawing room.
The countess thought for a moment and took a sniff from a gold snuffbox decorated with a portrait of her husband.
“These visits have quite worn me out,” she said. “Well then, she shall be the last I receive. She is very prim and proper. Show her in,” she said to her servant in a sad voice, as if she were saying: “Very well then, finish me off.”
A tall, plump lady with a proud face and her pretty little daughter entered the drawing room in a rustling of dresses.
“Dear countess, how long it has been … she has had to stay in bed, the poor child … at the ball at the Razumovskys … and Countess Apraksina … I was so glad.”
The sound of lively women’s voices interrupting each other mingled with the sound of dresses rustling and chairs being drawn up. There began one of those conversations which are initiated precisely in order that, at the first pause, one may rise, rustle one’s dress, and say: “I am so delighted! Mama and Countess Apraksina wish you good health …” – and, rustling one’s dress yet again, proceed to the hallway, put on one’s fur coat or cloak and depart.
The conversation turned to the most important news in town at the time, the illness of a famous, rich and handsome man of Empress Catherine’s day, the old Count Bezukhov, and his illegitimate son Pierre, who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s soirée.
“I feel awfully sorry for the poor count,” said the guest, “his health was bad enough already, and now comes this distress from his son. It will be the death of him!”
“What’s that?” asked the countess, as though she did not know what her guest was talking about, despite having already heard the reason for Count Bezukhov’s distress at least fifteen times.
“That’s modern-day education for you! While he was abroad,” the guest continued, “this young man was left to his own devices and now they’re saying in St. Petersburg that he has done such terrible things, he has been banished here with a police escort.”
“Well, I never!” said the countess.
“He chose his friends badly,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna interjected. “They say that he and Prince Vasily’s son, and a certain Dolokhov, got up to God only knows what. And they have both suffered for it. Dolokhov has been reduced to the ranks and Bezukhov’s son has been banished to Moscow. As for Anatole Kuragin – his father hushed things up somehow. He managed to stay in the Horse Guards regiment.”
“But what can they have done?” asked the countess.
“They are absolute bandits, especially Dolokhov,” said the guest. “He is the son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a respectable lady, but what of it? Can you imagine, the three of them got hold of a bear from somewhere and took it off with them in a carriage to see some actresses? The police came running to calm them down, and they caught the local policeman, tied him back to back with the bear and threw the bear into the Moika river; the bear was swimming along with the policeman on top of it.”
“A fine figure of a policeman, ma chère,” the count exclaimed, splitting his sides laughing, with an air of approval which suggested that, in spite of his age, he would not have minded taking part in such fun and games.
“Oh, how terrible! What is there to laugh at, count?”
But the ladies laughed too, despite themselves.
“They barely managed to rescue the unfortunate man,” the guest continued. “And that is the clever way in which the son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov amuses himself!” she added. “And they said he was so well brought-up and intelligent. This is what all that foreign upbringing has led to. I hope no one here will receive him, despite his wealth. They wanted to introduce him to me. I positively refused: I have daughters.”
“But this is a quite excellent prank, ma chère. Good for them!” said the count, making no attempt to restrain his laughter.
The guest looked at him in prim annoyance.
“Ah, ma chère Marya Lvovna,” he said in his badly pronounced poor French, “youth must sow its wild oats. Really and truly!” he added. “Your husband and I were no saints either. We had our little peccadilloes too.”
He winked at her; the guest did not reply.
“Why do you say that this young man is so rich?” asked the countess, leaning away from the girls, who immediately pretended not to be listening. “Surely he only has illegitimate children. And I think … Pierre is also illegitimate.”
The guest gestured vaguely.
“He has twenty illegitimate children, I believe.”
Princess Anna Mikhailovna intervened in the conversation, clearly wishing to demonstrate her connections and her knowledge of all the affairs of high society.
“That is the point,” she said significantly, and also in a half-whisper. “Count Kirill Vladimirovich’s reputation is well known … He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favourite.”
“What a fine man he was,” said the countess, “only last year! I never laid eyes on a more handsome man.”
“He is greatly changed now,” said Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “What I wanted to say,” she continued, “is that on his wife’s side, the direct heir to the entire estate is Prince Vasily, but Pierre was greatly loved by his father, who provided for his education and wrote to His Majesty … So no one knows, if he dies (and he is in such a bad way that it is expected any minute, and Lorrain has come from St. Petersburg), who will get this immense fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasily. Forty thousand souls and millions upon millions. I know this so well, because Prince Vasily told me himself. And Kirill Vladimirovich is a third cousin of mine on my mother’s side, and he was Borya’s godfather,” she added, as though she attached no importance whatever to that circumstance.
“Prince Vasily arrived in Moscow yesterday. He is going for some audit, I am told,” said the guest.
“Yes, but between you and me,” said the princess, “that is a mere pretext: he has actually come to see Count Kirill Vladimirovich after hearing that he is in such a bad way.”
“Nonetheless, ma chère, it was an excellent prank,” said the count and then, noticing that the senior guest was not listening to him, he turned to the young ladies. “That policeman cut a fine figure, I imagine.”
And demonstrating the policeman waving his arms, he began laughing again with that resonant bass laughter that shook his entire plump body, the way people laugh who always eat and, especially, drink well.
XIV
Silence fell. The countess looked at her guest with a polite smile, but without disguising the fact that she would now be not in the least offended if her guest were to get up and leave. The guest’s daughter was already adjusting her dress and glancing enquiringly at her mother, when suddenly from the next room there was the sound of several male and female feet running towards the door, the clatter of a stool dragged and overturned, and a thirteen-year-old girl with the skirt of her short muslin frock oddly tucked up came bursting into the room and stopped in the middle. She seemed to have misjudged her speed and galloped so far in by accident. That very same moment four figures appeared in the doorway: two young men – one a student with a crimson collar, the other a Guards officer – a fifteen-year-old girl and a fat, ruddy-cheeked boy in a child’s smock.
The count leapt up and, swaying on his feet, spread his arms wide around the girl who had run in.
“Ah, there she is!” he cried, laughing. “The name-day girl! Ma chère name-day girl!”
“My dear, there is a time for everything,” the countess said to her daughter, obviously merely in order to say something, because it was clear at a glance that her daughter was not the least bit afraid of her. “You’re always spoiling her,” she added, speaking to her husband.
“Hello, my dear, happy name-day to you,” said the guest. “What a charming child!” she added, addressing her flattery to the mother.
The black-eyed, large-mouthed and plain but lively little girl, with her childish, exposed little shoulders heaving and contracting in their bodice after the fast run, with her tangle of black curls swept backwards, thin little bare arms and fast little legs in little lacy pantaloons and little open shoes, was at that sweet age when the little girl is no longer a child, but the child is not yet a young woman. Twisting away from her father, quick and graceful and evidently unused to the drawing room, she ran across to her mother and, paying no attention to her rebuke, hid her flushed little face in the lacework of her mother’s mantilla and burst into laughter.
“Mama! We wanted to marry Boris … Ha, ha!… To the doll … Ha, ha! Yes … Ah … Mimi …” she said through her laughter. “And … Ah … He ran away.”
She pulled a large doll out from under her skirt and showed it to them: a black, broken-off nose, a cracked cardboard head and kidskin bottom, legs and arms that dangled loosely at the elbows and knees, but still with a fresh, elegant, carmine smile and thick-black, arching brows.
The countess had been acquainted for four years with this Mimi, Natasha’s inseparable friend, a gift from her godfather.
“You see?” And Natasha could not say any more (everything seemed funny to her). She fell down onto her mother and broke into such loud, resounding laughter that everybody, even the prim and proper guest, began laughing in spite of themselves. This laughter could even be heard in the footman’s room. The countess’s menservants exchanged smiling glances with the visiting liveried footman, who had been sitting glumly on his chair all the while.
“Now, off with you, you and your monster!” said the little girl’s mother, pushing her daughter away in feigned anger. “This is my youngest, a spoilt little girl, as you can see,” she said to the guest.
Tearing her little face away for a moment from her mother’s lacy shawl and glancing up at her, Natasha said quietly through her tears of laughter:
“I feel so embarrassed, mama!” And quick as could be, as if she were afraid of being caught, she hid her face again.
The guest, obliged to admire the family scene, felt it necessary to take some kind of part in it.
“Tell me, my dear,” she said, addressing Natasha, “who is this Mimi to you? Your daughter, I suppose?”
Natasha did not like this guest and the tone in which she condescended to make conversation with a child.
“No, madame, she’s not my daughter, she’s a doll,” she said, smiling boldly, got up off her mother and sat down beside her eldest sister, demonstrating in this way that she could behave like a big girl.
Meanwhile the entire young generation (Boris the officer, Anna Mikhailovna’s son; Nikolai the student, the count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece; and little Petrushka, the youngest son) had all distributed themselves round the drawing room as if they had suddenly been dropped into cold water and were clearly struggling to restrain within the limits of decorum the excitement and merriment that were still glowing in every feature of their faces. It was plain to see that out there, in the back rooms from which they had come running in so impetuously, their conversations had been more fun than the talk here of town scandals, the weather and Countess Apraksina.
The two young men, student and officer, were childhood friends, both the same age and both handsome, although they were quite unalike. Boris, a tall, fair-haired youth, had a long face with fine, regular features. A calm and thoughtful mind was expressed in his pleasant grey eyes, but in the corners of his still hairless lips there lurked a constantly mocking and slightly cunning smile, which instead of spoiling his expression, seemed in fact to add spice to his fresh, handsome face that was so obviously still untouched by either vice or grief. Nikolai was not very tall, with a broad chest and a very subtle, fine figure. His open face, with soft, wavy, light-brown hair surrounding a prominent, broad forehead, and the ecstatic gaze of his half-closed, prominent brown eyes, always expressed the impression of the moment. Little black hairs had already appeared on his upper lip, and impetuosity and enthusiasm were expressed in his every feature. Both young men bowed and took seats in the drawing room. Boris did this fluently and easily; Nikolai, on the contrary, with almost childish resentment. Nikolai glanced by turns at the guests and the door, evidently with no desire to conceal the fact that he was bored, and hardly even answered the questions put to him by the guests. Boris, on the contrary, immediately found the right tone and informed them with mock gravity that he had known this Mimi doll as a young girl when her nose was still perfect, that she had aged a lot in the five years he had known her, what with her head splitting open right across the skull. Then he enquired after the lady’s health. Everything he said was simple and decorous, neither too witty nor too foolish, but the smile playing about his lips indicated that even as he spoke he did not ascribe the slightest importance to his own words and was speaking purely out of a sense of decorum.
“Mama, what is he speaking like a grown-up for? I don’t want him to,” said Natasha, going up to her mother and pointing at Boris like a capricious child. Boris smiled at her.
“You just want to play dolls with him all the time,” replied Princess Anna Mikhailovna, patting Natasha’s bare shoulder, which shrank away nervously and withdrew into its bodice at the touch of her hand.
“I’m bored,” whispered Natasha. “Mama, nanny is asking if she can go visiting, can she? Can she?” she repeated, raising her voice, with that characteristic capacity of women for quick-wittedness in innocent deception. “She can, mama!” she shouted, barely able to restrain her laughter and, glancing at Boris, she curtseyed to the guests and walked as far as the door, but once outside it started running as fast as her little legs could carry her. Boris became pensive.
“I thought you wanted to go too, maman. Do you need the carriage?” he said, blushing as he addressed his mother.
“Yes, off you go now and tell them to get it ready,” she said, smiling. Boris went out quietly through the door and set off after Natasha; the fat boy in the smock ran behind him angrily, as if he were annoyed by some interruption to his studies.
XV
Of the young people, aside from the countess’s elder daughter, who was four years older than her sister and already behaved like a grown-up, and the young lady visitor, the only ones left in the drawing room were Nikolai and Sonya the niece, who sat there, with that rather artificial, festive smile that many adults believe they should wear when present at other people’s conversations, repeatedly casting tender glances at her cousin. Sonya was a slim, petite brunette with a gentle gaze shaded by long eyelashes, a thick black plait wound twice around her head and sallow skin on her face and especially on her bare, lean but graceful and sinewy arms and neck. With the smoothness of her movements, the gentle flexibility of her little limbs and her rather cunning and reticent manner she involuntarily reminded people of a beautiful but still immature kitten that would become a delightful cat. She evidently thought it proper to indicate her interest in the general conversation with her festive smile but, against her will, her eyes gazed out from under their long lashes at her cousin, who was leaving for the army, with such passionate girlish adoration, that her smile could not possibly have deceived anyone for even a moment, and it was clear that the little cat had only sat down in order to spring up even more energetically and start playing with her cousin just as soon as they got out of this drawing room.
“Yes, ma chère,” said the old count, addressing the guest and pointing to his Nikolai. “His friend Boris there has been appointed an officer, and out of friendship he does not want to be left behind, so he’s abandoning university and this old man and he’s going to join the army. And there was a place all ready for him in the archive and everything. How’s that for friendship!” the count queried.
SONYA Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_8aaa2b9c-56e4-51e1-a803-e833f1a964de)
“But after all, they do say that war has been declared,” said the guest.
“They’ve been saying that for a long time,” the count said, still speaking vaguely. “They’ll say it again a few times, and then again, and leave it at that. How’s that for friendship, then!” he repeated. “He’s joining the hussars.”
Not knowing what to say, the guest shook her head.
“It’s not out of friendship at all,” responded Nikolai, flaring up and speaking as if he were defending himself against a shameful slander. “It’s not at all out of friendship, it’s just that I feel a calling for military service.”
He glanced round at the young lady guest: the young lady was looking at him with a smile, approving the young man’s action.
“We have Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars Regiment, dining with us today. He’s been on leave here and is going to take him back with him. What can one do?” said the count, shrugging and speaking jocularly about a matter that evidently pained him a great deal.
For some reason Nikolai suddenly became angry.
“But I told you, papa, that if you don’t wish to let me go, I shall stay. I know I’m no good for anything but military service. I’m not a diplomat, I don’t know how to conceal what I feel,” he said, gesticulating too enthusiastically for his words and glancing all the time with the coquettishness of handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady guest.
The little cat, devouring him with her eyes, seemed ready at any second to launch into her game and demonstrate her full feline nature. The young lady continued to approve him with her smile.
“Perhaps something might just come of me,” he added, “but I am no good for anything here …”
“Well, well, all right!” said the old count. “He’s always getting worked up. Bonaparte has turned everyone’s heads: everyone thinks about how he rose from a corporal to an emperor. Well, then, if it pleases God …” he added, not noticing the guest’s mocking smile.
“Well, off you go, off you go, Nikolai, I can see you’re keen to be off,” said the countess.
“Not at all,” her son replied, but nonetheless a moment later he got up, bowed and left the room.
Sonya carried on sitting a little longer, smiling more and more falsely all the while, then got up, still with the same smile, and went out.
“How very transparent all these young people’s secrets are!” said Countess Anna Mikhailovna, pointing to Sonya and laughing. The guest laughed.
“Yes,” said the countess, after the ray of sunshine that this young generation had brought into the drawing room had disappeared, and as if she were answering a question that no one had asked her, but which was constantly on her mind. “So much suffering, so much worry,” she continued, “all borne so that we can rejoice in them now. But even now, truly, there is more fear than joy. You’re always afraid, always afraid! It’s the very age that holds so much danger for girls and for boys.”
“Everything depends on upbringing,” said the guest.
“Yes, you are right,” the countess continued. “So far, thank God, I have been my children’s friend and I have their complete trust,” she said, repeating the error of many parents who believe their children keep no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante and if Nikolenka, with his fiery character, should get up to mischief (boys will be boys), then it would be nothing like those Petersburg gentlemen.”
“Yes, they are splendid, splendid children,” agreed the count, who always resolved matters that he found complicated by finding everything splendid. “Just imagine! Decided to join the hussars! What about that, ma chère!”
“What a sweet creature your youngest is,” said the guest, glancing round reproachfully at her own daughter, as though impressing on her with this glance that that was how she ought to be in order to be liked, not the stiff doll that she was. “Full of fun!”
“Yes, full of fun,” said the count. “She takes after me! And what a voice, real talent! She may be my own daughter, but it’s no more than the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, another Salomini. We’ve engaged an Italian to teach her.”
“Is it not rather early? They do say it’s bad for the voice to train it at this age.”
“Oh no, not at all too early!” said the count.
“And what about our mothers getting married at twelve and thirteen?” added Countess Anna Mikhailovna.
“She’s already in love with Boris, how do you like that?” said the countess, smiling gently, glancing at Boris’s mother and, clearly replying to the thought that was always on her mind, she went on: “Well now, you see, if I were strict with her, if I forbade her … God knows what they would do in secret” (the countess meant that they would have kissed), “but as it is I know every word she says. She’ll come running to me this evening and tell me everything herself. Perhaps I do spoil her, but I really think that is best. I was strict with my elder daughter.”
“Yes, I was raised quite differently,” said the elder daughter, the beautiful Countess Vera, with a smile. But a smile did not adorn Vera’s face in the way it usually does: on the contrary, her face became unnatural and therefore unpleasant. The elder daughter Vera was good-looking, she was clever, she was well brought up. She had a pleasant voice. What she had said was just and apt but, strange to say, everyone, even the guest and the countess, glanced round at her as though they wondered why she had said it and felt uneasy.
“People always try to be clever with their oldest children, they want to make something exceptional of them,” said the guest.
“No point in pretending, ma chère! The little countess tried to be clever with Vera,” said the count. “But what of it? She still turned out splendid.”
And then, noticing with the intuition that is more perceptive than the intellect that Vera was feeling embarrassed, he went over to her and stroked her shoulder with his hand.
“Excuse me, I have a few things to see to. Do stay a bit longer,” he added, bowing and preparing to go out.
The guests stood up and left, promising to come to dinner.
“What a way to behave! Ugh, I thought they would never leave!” said the countess after she had seen the guests out.
XVI
When Natasha came out of the drawing room and started running, she only got as far as the conservatory. There she stopped, listening to the talk in the drawing room and waiting for Boris to come out. She was already beginning to feel impatient and stamped her foot, preparing to burst into tears because he was not coming immediately. When she heard the young man’s footsteps, not quiet, but rapid and discreet, the thirteen-year-old girl quickly dashed in among the tubs of plants and hid.
“Boris Nikolaevich!” she said in a deep bass, trying to frighten him, and then immediately started laughing. Catching sight of her, Boris shook his head and smiled.
“Boris, come here please,” she said with a look of significant cunning. He went over to her, making his way between the tubs.
“Boris! Kiss Mimi,” she said, smiling mischievously and holding out her doll.
“Why shouldn’t I kiss her?” he said, moving closer and keeping his eyes on Natasha.
“No, say: ‘I don’t want to.’”
She moved away from him.
“Well, I can say I don’t want to as well, if you like. Where’s the fun in kissing a doll?”
“You don’t want to? Right, then come here,” she said and moved away deeper into the plants and threw the doll onto a tub of flowers. “Closer, closer!” she whispered. She caught hold of the officer by his cuffs and her blushing face was filled with fearful solemnity.
“But do you want to kiss me?” she whispered barely audibly, peering at him warily, smiling and almost crying in her excitement.
Boris blushed.
“You’re so funny!” he said, leaning down towards her and blushing even more, but not trying to do anything and biding his time. The faint hint of mockery was still playing on his lips, on the point of disappearing.
She suddenly jumped up onto a tub so that she was taller than him, put both arms round him so that her slim, bare hands bent around his neck and, flinging her hair back with a toss of her head, kissed him full on the lips.
“Ah, what have I done!” she cried, then slipped, laughing, between the tubs to the other side of the plants, and her frisky little footsteps squeaked rapidly in the direction of the nursery. Boris ran after and stopped her.
“Natasha,” he said, “can I tell you something really special?”
She nodded.
“I love you,” he said slowly. “You’re not a child. Natasha, do what I’m going to ask you.”
“What are you going to ask me?”
“Please, let’s not do what we just did for another four years.”
Natasha stopped and thought for a moment.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she said, counting on her slim little fingers. “All right! Is it settled, then?” And a serious smile of joy illuminated her vivacious though not beautiful face.
“Yes!” said Boris.
“For ever?” the girl said. “Until death itself?”
And, taking him by the arm, she calmly walked with him into the nursery. Boris’s handsome, refined face turned red and the expression of mockery disappeared entirely from his lips. He thrust out his chest and sighed in happiness and contentment. His eyes seemed to be gazing far into the future, four years ahead, to the happy year of 1809. The young people gathered once again in the nursery, where they loved to sit most of all.
“No, you shan’t leave!” shouted Nikolai, who did and said everything passionately and impetuously, grabbing Boris by the sleeve of his uniform jacket with one hand and pulling his arm away from his sister with the other. “You have to get married.”
“You have to! You have to!” both the girls cried.
“I’ll be the sexton, Nikolaenka,” shouted Petrushka. “Please, let me be the sexton: ‘Oh Lord have mercy!’”
Although it might seem incomprehensible how much fun young men and girls could find in the wedding of the doll and Boris, one look at the exultation and joy expressed on all their faces when the doll, adorned with Seville orange blossom and wearing a white dress, was set on its kidskin bottom on a little post and Boris, who was ready to agree to anything, was led up to her, and little Petrusha, having donned a skirt, pretended he was the sexton – one look at all this was enough to share in this joy, even without understanding it.
During the dressing of the bride, for decency’s sake Nikolai and Boris were banished from the room. Nikolai walked to and fro, sighing to himself and shrugging his shoulders.
NATASHA ROSTOV AND BORIS DRUBETSKOY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_95efc402-d45e-597d-a584-8833d54a666b)
“What’s the matter?” asked Boris.
Nikolai glanced at his friend and gestured despairingly with his hand.
“Ah, you don’t know what just happened to me!” he said, clutching his head in his hands.
“What?” asked Boris, in a calm, humorous tone.
“Well, I’m going away, and she … No, I can’t say it!”
“But what is it?” Boris asked again. “Something with Sonya?”
“Yes. Do you know what?”
“What?”
“Agh, it’s incredible! What do you think? Do I have to tell my father after this?”
“But what?”
“You know, I don’t even know myself how it happened, I kissed Sonya today: I have acted vilely. But what am I to do? I am madly in love. But was it bad of me? I know it was bad … What do you say?”
Boris smiled.
“What are you saying? Did you really?” he asked in sly, mocking amazement. “Kissed her straight on the lips? When?”
“Why, just now. You wouldn’t have done that? Eh? You wouldn’t have. Have I acted badly?”
“Well, I don’t know. It all depends on what your intentions are.”
“Well! But of course. That’s right. I told her. As soon as they make me an officer, I shall marry her.”
“That’s amazing,” declared Boris. “How very decisive you are!”
Nikolai laughed, reassured.
“I’m amazed that you have never been in love and no one has ever fallen in love with you.”
“That’s my character,” said Boris, blushing.
“Oh, yes, you’re so very cunning! It’s true what Vera says,” Nikolai said and suddenly began tickling his friend.
“And you’re so very awful. It is true, what Vera says.” And Boris, who disliked being tickled, pushed his friend’s hands away. “You’re bound to do something extraordinary.”
Both of them, laughing, went back to the girls to conclude the rite of marriage.
XVII
The countess felt so tired after the visits that she gave orders not to receive anyone else, and the doorman was given strict instructions to invite everyone who might still arrive with congratulations to dine. Besides that, she wanted to have a confidential talk with her childhood friend Anna Mikhailovna, whom she had not seen properly since her arrival from St. Petersburg. Anna Mikhailovna, with her careworn and agreeable face, moved closer to the countess’s armchair.
“I shall be entirely candid with you,” said Anna Mikhailovna. “There are so few of us old friends left. That is why I value your friendship so.”
The princess looked at Vera and stopped. The countess squeezed her friend’s hand.
“Vera,” said the countess, addressing her elder, and obviously less loved daughter. “How can you be so completely tactless? Surely you can tell you are not needed here? Go to your sisters or …”
The beautiful Vera smiled, apparently not feeling in the least insulted, and went to her room. But as she passed by the nursery she noticed two couples in there, seated symmetrically at the two windows. Sonya was sitting close beside Nikolai, who, with his face flushed, was reading her the first poem that he had ever composed. Boris and Natasha were sitting by the other window without speaking. Boris was holding her hand and he let go of it when Vera appeared. Natasha picked up the little box of gloves standing beside her and began sorting through them. Vera smiled. Nikolai and Sonya looked at her, got up and left the room.
“Natasha,” said Vera to her younger sister, who was intently sorting through the scented gloves. “Why do Nikolai and Sonya run away from me? What secrets do they have?”
“Why, what business is it of yours, Vera?” Natasha asked protectively in her squeaky voice, continuing with her work. She was evidently feeling even more kind and affectionate towards everyone because of her own happiness.
“It’s very stupid of them,” said Vera in a tone that Natasha thought sounded offensive.
“Everyone has their own secrets. We don’t bother you and Berg,” she said, growing heated.
“How stupid! You’ll see, I’m going to tell mama how you carry on with Boris. It’s not right.”
“Natalya Ilinishna treats me perfectly well. I can’t complain,” he said sarcastically.
Natasha did not laugh and looked up at him.
“Don’t, Boris, you’re such a diplomat” (the word diplomat was very popular with the children, in the special meaning which they gave to this word), “it’s really boring,” she said. “Why is she pestering me?”
She turned to Vera.
“You’ll never understand,” she said, “because you’ve never loved anyone, you have no heart, you’re nothing but Madame de Genlis” (this nickname, which was regarded as very insulting, had been given to Vera by Nikolai) “and your greatest pleasure is to cause trouble for others. You can flirt with Berg as much as you like.”
She blurted this out hurriedly and flounced out of the nursery.
The beautiful Vera, who had such an irritating, disagreeable effect on everyone, smiled again with the same smile that meant nothing and, apparently unaffected by what had been said to her, went up to the mirror and adjusted her scarf and hair. As she gazed at her own beautiful face, she visibly turned colder and calmer than ever.
XVIII
In the drawing room the conversation was continuing.
“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “in my life too not everything is roses. Do you think I cannot see that with the way we live, our fortune will not last long? And it’s all the club, and his generous nature. When we are in the country, what rest do we get there? Theatres, hunts and God knows what else. But there I am talking about myself! Now, how did you arrange everything? I am constantly amazed at you, Annette, at your age, the way you gallop off in a carriage on your own, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to all the ministers and all the important people, and you know how to deal with them all, I am amazed! Well, how did everything go? I don’t know how to do anything of that sort.”
“Ah my darling,” replied Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “God grant that you may never know how hard it is to be left a widow with no support and with a son whom you love to distraction. One can learn to do everything,” she continued with a certain pride. “My lawsuit taught me that. If I need to see one of these bigwigs, I write a note: ‘Princess so-and-so wishes to see so-and-so’, and I go myself in a cab, two or three times if necessary, even four, until I get what I want. I don’t give a jot what people think of me.”
“Well, how did you ask for Borenka?” asked the countess. “After all, your son is a Guards officer, but Nikolai is going as a cadet. I have no one to intercede for me. Whom did you petition?”
“Prince Vasily. He was very kind. Now he has agreed to everything, and informed His Majesty,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said ecstatically, completely forgetting all the humiliation that she had gone through to achieve her goal.
“And has he grown old, Prince Vasily?” the countess asked. “I haven’t seen him since our dramatics at the Rumyantsevs’. I think he has forgotten all about me. He used to run around after me,” the countess recalled with a smile.
“He is the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikhailovna. “The prince is courteous, positively brimming over with compliments. His high position has not turned his head at all. ‘I regret that I can do so little for you, my dear princess,’ he said to me, ‘ask what you will.’ Yes, he is a splendid man and an excellent relative. But you know, Nathalie, how I love my son. I don’t know what I would not do for his happiness. And my circumstances are so bad,” Anna Mikhailovna continued sadly, lowering her voice, “so very bad that I am now in a quite appalling situation. My miserable lawsuit is consuming everything I have and never makes progress. Can you believe that I do not have, literally do not have, ten kopecks to spare, and I have no idea where to get the money for Boris’s uniform.” She took out a handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred roubles, and I have one twenty-five-rouble note. I am in such a state. My only hope now is Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not support his godchild – after all, he is Boris’s godfather – and provide him with something to live on, then all my efforts will have been wasted, I shall have no money to fit him out.”
The countess shed a few tears and pondered something without speaking.
“I often think, perhaps it is a sin,” said the princess, “but I often think: there is Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov living alone … it’s an immense fortune … and what is he living for? Life is a burden to him, and Borya is only about to start living.”
“He is bound to leave something to Boris,” said the countess.
“God knows. These rich men and grandees are such egotists. But nonetheless I shall go to him now, and take Boris, and tell him to his face what is the matter. Let people think what they will of me, I really do not care, when my son’s destiny depends on it.” The princess got to her feet. “It is now two o’clock. And you are dining at four. I shall have enough time to go there and back.” And with the bearing and manners of a practical St. Petersburg lady who knows how to make good use of her time, Anna Mikhailovna sent for her son and went out into the front hall with him.
“Goodbye, my darling,” she said to the countess, who saw her to the door. “Wish me success,” she added, whispering so that her son would not hear.
“You are going to Count Kirill Vladimirovich, ma chère,” the count said from the dining room as he emerged into the hallway. “If he is feeling better, invite Pierre to dine with us. He has been here before, he danced with the children. You absolutely must invite him. Well, we shall see how Taras excels himself today. They say Count Orlov never had such a dinner as we shall have today.”
XIX
“My dear Boris,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said to her son as Countess Rostova’s carriage, in which they were sitting, drove along the straw-covered street and into the wide, sand-strewn courtyard of the unfamiliar colonnaded house belonging to Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. “My dear Boris,” said his mother, freeing her hand from under her old coat and laying it on her son’s arm in a gesture of timid affection, “please, set aside your pride. Count Kirill Vladimirovich is after all your godfather, and your future fate depends on him. Remember that, be nice, as you know how to be.”
“If only I knew that anything would come of it, apart from humiliation,” her son replied coldly. “But I promised and I am doing it for you. Only this is the last time, mama. Remember that.”
Even though the carriage was standing at the entrance, the doorman scrutinised the mother and son who, without giving their names, had walked straight up between the two rows of niched statues and into the glazed vestibule, and he asked, casting a significant glance at the countess’s shabby coat, whom they wished to see, the princesses or the count, and, on learning that it was the count, he informed them that his excellency was feeling worse today and his excellency was not receiving anyone.
“We can leave,” the son said in French, evidently delighted at this news.
“My friend!” the mother said in an imploring tone of voice, touching her son’s arm again, as though this touch could calm or excite him.
Boris, fearful of creating a scene in front of the doorman, said nothing, with the expression of a man who has decided to drain his bitter cup to the last drop. Without unbuttoning his greatcoat, he looked enquiringly at his mother.
“My dear fellow,” said Anna Mikhailovna in a soft voice, addressing the doorman, “I know that Count Kirill Vladimirovich is very ill … that is why I have come … I am a relative … I will not disturb him, my dear fellow … And I would only need to see Prince Vasily Sergeevich, he is staying here, after all. Announce us, please.”
The doorman tugged morosely on a cord leading upstairs and turned away.
“Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasily Sergeevich,” he called to the footman in knee-breeches, shoes and tails, who had come running down and was peering out from under the overhang of the stairs.
The mother straightened the folds of her dyed silk dress and, with a glance at herself in the tall Venetian pier glass set into the wall, strode briskly up the stair-carpet in her down-at-heel shoes. “My dear, you promised me,” she said again to her son, trying to rouse him with the touch of her hand. Lowering his eyes, the son walked on gloomily.
PRINCESS ANNA MIKHAILOVNA DRUBETSKAYA AND HER SON BORIS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_c91d9f57-55d1-5139-81fa-380a2f824409)
They entered a hall from which one of the doors led into the chambers allotted to Prince Vasily.
As the mother and son, walking out into the centre of the room, were contemplating asking the way from an old footman who had jumped to his feet at their arrival, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasily emerged, dressed simply in a velvet smoking jacket with only a single star, accompanied by a handsome, dark-haired man. This man was the famous St. Petersburg physician Lorrain.
“So it is definite,” the prince was saying.
“Prince, errare est humanum, but …” the doctor replied, burring his r’s and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
“Very well, very well …”
Noticing Anna Mikhailovna and her son, Prince Vasily dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them without speaking, but with an interrogatory air. The son was astonished to see the profound grief that was suddenly expressed in Princess Anna Mikhailovna’s eyes.
“Indeed, what distressing circumstances we are obliged to meet in, prince … Well, how is our dear invalid?” she said, disregarding the cold, insulting gaze directed at her and addressing the prince as her best friend, with whom she could share her woe. Prince Vasily looked in baffled enquiry, first at her, then at Boris. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasily, making no response to the bow, turned back to Anna Mikhailovna and answered her question with a movement of the head and lips which signified the very worst prospect for the invalid.
“Surely not!” exclaimed Anna Mikhailovna. “Oh, that is terrible! The very idea is appalling … This is my son,” she added, indicating Boris. “He wished to thank you himself.”
Boris bowed politely once again.
“Believe me, prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.”
“I am glad to have been able to do something to please you, my dear Anna Mikhailovna,” said Prince Vasily, adjusting his jabot, expressing far greater self-importance with his gesture and tone of voice to his satisfied suppliant here in Moscow than he had managed in St. Petersburg, at Anna Scherer’s soirée.
“Try to serve well and be worthy,” he added, addressing Boris with severity. “I am so glad … Are you here on leave?” he enunciated in his impassive tone of voice.
“I am awaiting orders, your excellency, to take up my new posting,” Boris replied, betraying neither annoyance at the prince’s sharp tone nor a desire to engage in conversation, but speaking so calmly and coldly that the prince regarded him more closely.
“Do you live with your mother?”
“I live in the house of Countess Rostova,” said Boris and added, again coldly, “your excellency.”
He evidently said “your excellency” not so much in order to flatter the other man as to restrain him from familiarity.
“That is the Ilya Rostov who married Natalya Z.,” put in Anna Mikhailovna.
“I know, I know,” said Prince Vasily in his monotonous voice, with a typical Petersburgian’s contempt for everything Muscovite.
“I never could understand how Natalya could bring herself to marry that ill-bred bear of a man. A perfectly stupid and ridiculous individual. And a gambler into the bargain, so they say,” he said, thereby demonstrating that for all his contempt for Count Rostov and his like, and for all his important affairs of state, he was not above listening to the rumours of the town.
“But a very kind man, prince,” Anna Mikhailovna remarked, smiling with feeling, as though she were also aware that Count Rostov deserved such a low opinion, but was asking the prince to pity the poor old man.
“What do the doctors say?” the princess asked after a brief pause, once again with an expression of great sadness on her tearful face.
“There is not much hope,” said the prince.
“And I so much wanted to thank my uncle once more for all his kindnesses to me and Borya. He is his godson,” she added in a tone which suggested that this news ought to delight the prince highly.
Prince Vasily began thinking and frowned. Anna Mikhailovna realised that he was afraid of discovering in her a rival for Count Bezukhov’s inheritance. She hastened to reassure him.
“If it were not for my genuine love and devotion to my uncle,” she said, pronouncing the word with an especially casual confidence, “I know his character, noble and straightforward, but he has only the princesses here … They are still young.” She inclined her head and added in a whisper: “Has he fulfilled his final duty, prince? How precious those final minutes are! After all, things cannot get any worse, he must be made ready, if he is in such a bad way. We women, prince,” she said, smiling sweetly, “always know how to say these things. I must see him, no matter how painful it is for me, I am already accustomed to suffering.”
The prince had evidently understood what she was saying, and he had also understood, as he had at Anna Scherer’s soirée, that Anna Mikhailovna was not easily to be put off. “I fear that meeting might be too hard on him, dear Anna Mikhailovna,” he said. “Let us wait until the evening, the doctors have predicted a crisis.”
“But one must not wait, prince, at moments like this. Think, it concerns the salvation of his soul. Aah! The duty of a Christian is a terrible thing.” A door from the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the count’s nieces, emerged, with a beautiful, but cheerless, cold face and a long waist quite astonishingly out of proportion with her legs.
Prince Vasily turned to her.
“How is he?”
“Still the same. But now there’s all this noise,” said the princess, examining Anna Mikhailovna like a stranger.
“Ah, my dear, I did not recognise you,” Anna Mihailovna said with a glad smile, springing nimbly across to the count’s niece. “I have come to help you care for your uncle. I can well imagine how much you have suffered,” she added sympathetically, rolling her eyes upwards.
The princess did not even smile, but excused herself and went away. Anna Mikhailovna took off her gloves and, consolidating the gains she had made, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasily to sit beside her.
“Boris,” she said to her son with a smile. “I am going in to see the count … my uncle, and meanwhile you, my friend, go to see Pierre, and don’t forget to pass on the invitation from the Rostovs. They want him to come for dinner. He should not go though, I think,” she said, turning to the count.
“On the contrary,” said the prince, suddenly quite clearly out of sorts. “I should be glad if you would relieve me of that young fellow. He simply hangs about here. The count has not asked for him once.”
He shrugged. A footman led the young man down one staircase and up another to Pyotr Vladimirovich’s rooms.
XX
Boris, thanks to his placid and reserved character, was never at a loss in difficult situations. But now this placidity and reserve were intensified still further by the cloud of happiness that had enveloped him since morning and through which he seemed to see people’s faces, so that observation of his mother’s behaviour and her character became less upsetting. He found the position of petitioner, in which his mother had placed him, painful, but he himself felt in no way to blame.
Pierre had still not managed to choose a career for himself in St. Petersburg and had indeed been banished to Moscow for disorderly conduct. The story that had been recounted at Count Rostov’s house was correct: his presence had made Pierre a party to the tying of the policeman to the bear. He had arrived several days earlier and put up, as always, at his father’s house. Although he had assumed that his story was already known in Moscow and that the ladies surrounding his father, who were always hostile towards him, would use the opportunity to irritate the count, nonetheless on the day of his arrival he had gone to his father’s apartments. On entering the drawing room, the princesses’ usual haunt, he had greeted the ladies sitting there with their embroidery frames and a book, from which one of them was reading aloud. There were three of them. The eldest, a tidy, strict spinster with a long waist, the one who had come out to Anna Mikhailovna, was reading: the younger two, both rosy-cheeked and pretty, only distinguishable from each other by the fact that one had a mole above her lip which made her much prettier, were working at their embroidery frames. Pierre was received like a corpse or a carrier of plague. The eldest princess interrupted her reading and looked at him in silence with fearful eyes: the younger one with the mole, a cheerful and giggly individual, leaned over her embroidery frame to conceal the smile occasioned, no doubt, by the scene that was to come, which she foresaw would be amusing. She tugged at a strand of wool and bent her head close as though examining the stitchwork, scarcely able to restrain her laughter.
“Hello, cousin,” said Pierre. “Do you not recognise me?”
“I recognise you only too well, too well.”
“How is the count’s health? May I see him?” Pierre asked awkwardly, as always, but without embarrassment.
“The count is suffering both physically and morally, and you seem to have taken pains to inflict as much moral suffering on him as possible.”
“May I see the count?” Pierre repeated.
“Hmm! If you wish to kill him, to finish him completely, you may see him. Olga, go and see if the broth is ready for uncle, it will soon be time,” she added, thereby indicating to Pierre that they were busy and fully occupied with comforting his father, whereas he was obviously occupied only with causing him distress.
Olga went out. Pierre stood for a moment, looked at the sisters, bowed and said:
“Then I shall go to my room. When it is possible, you will let me know.”
He went out and heard the quiet laughter of the sister with the mole ringing behind him.
The following day Prince Vasily had arrived and installed himself in the count’s house. He summoned Pierre and told him, “My dear boy, if you behave here in the same way as in St. Petersburg, you will come to a very bad end: I have nothing more to say to you. The count is very, very ill, you should not see him at all.”
Since then no one had bothered Pierre, who, wherever he happened to be, was content with his own thoughts and walked around his room, occasionally halting in the corners, making threatening gestures at the wall, as if he were running an invisible enemy through with a sword, and peering severely over the top of his spectacles, and then recommencing his stroll, repeating inaudible words to himself, shrugging his shoulders and throwing his hands up in the air.
“England is done for!” he said, frowning and pointing at someone. “Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and the people’s law, is condemned to …” He had not yet finished pronouncing sentence on Pitt, imagining at that moment that he was Napoleon himself and having already completed, together with his beloved hero, the dangerous crossing via the Pas de Calais and conquered London, when he saw a young, well-proportioned, handsome officer entering his room. He halted. Pierre, who had seen Boris only rarely, had left him as a fourteen-year-old boy and did not remember him at all, but in spite of that, in his typical brisk and genial manner he took him by the hand and smiled amicably, displaying his bad teeth.
“Do you remember me?” asked Boris. “Maman and I came to see the count, but it seems he is not quite well.”
“Yes, it seems he is unwell. Everyone is bothering him,” replied Pierre, completely failing to notice that by saying this he appeared to be reproaching Boris and his mother.
He was trying to recall who this young man was, but Boris thought he had caught some hint in Pierre’s words.
He flushed and looked at Pierre boldly and sardonically, as much as to say: “I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Pierre could think of nothing to say.
“Count Rostov has invited you to come for dinner today,” Boris continued after a silence that was rather long and awkward for Pierre.
“Ah! Count Rostov!” Pierre said cheerfully. “So you are his son, Ilya. Can you imagine, for a moment I didn’t recognise you. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?”
“You are mistaken,” Boris said unhurriedly, with a bold and rather sardonic smile. “I am Boris, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya’s son. It is Rostov senior who is called Ilya, and his son is Nikolai. And I have never known any Madame Jacquot.”
Pierre began waving his hands and his head about as though he had been attacked by a mosquito or bees.
“Ah, this is terrible! I have confused everything. I have so many relatives in Moscow! You are Boris … yes. Right then, you and I have agreed on that. Well, what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? The English will really be in trouble if Napoleon crosses the Channel. I think an expedition is very likely. As long as Villeneuve does not blunder.”
Boris knew nothing about any Boulogne expedition, he did not read the newspapers and this was the first time he had heard of Villeneuve.
“Here in Moscow we are more concerned with dinners and gossip than politics,” he said in his calm, sardonic tone. “I know nothing about all this and have no thoughts on it. Moscow is concerned with gossip above all else,” he continued. “And what they are talking about now is you and the count.”
Pierre smiled his kind smile, as though afraid that his interlocutor might say something that he would regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly and coolly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.
“Moscow has nothing better to do than gossip,” he continued. “Everybody is concerned with whom the count will leave his fortune to, although he might perhaps outlive us all, which I wish with all my heart.”
“Yes, it is very difficult,” Pierre interjected. “Very difficult.” Pierre was still afraid that this boy-officer might inadvertently become involved in a conversation that would be embarrassing for him.
“But it must seem to you,” said Boris, blushing, but without changing his voice or pose, “it must surely seem that everybody is only concerned to get something from the rich man.”
That is how it is, thought Pierre.
“But what I wish to tell you, in order to avoid any misunderstandings, is that you would be greatly mistaken if you were to count myself and my mother among those people. We are very poor, but I, at least, speaking for myself, precisely because your father is rich, do not consider myself his relative and will never ask for anything or accept anything from him,” he concluded, growing more and more heated.
It took Pierre a long time to understand, but when he did, he leapt up off the divan, seized hold of Boris by the hand with his characteristic speed and clumsiness and, blushing far more than Boris, began speaking with a mixed feeling of shame and hurt.
“But listen … That’s very strange! How could I … And who could ever think … I know quite well …”
But Boris again interrupted him.
“I am glad I have made everything clear. Perhaps you find it disagreeable, forgive me,” he said, soothing Pierre instead of being soothed by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I make it a rule to say everything directly. What shall I tell them? Will you come to the Rostovs for dinner?”
And Boris, evidently because he had relieved himself of his onerous duty, extricating himself from one awkward situation and placing the other man in another, became cheerful and relaxed.
“Now, listen,” said Pierre, calming down. “You are an amazing person. What you said just now is fine, very fine. Of course, you do not know me, we have not seen each other for so long … we were still children … You imagine me as … but I understand, I understand you very well. I could not have done that, I would not have had the courage, but it is all fine. I am very glad to have met you again. Strange,” he added with a smile, after pausing briefly, “what you imagined me to be like!” He laughed. “Well, what of it! You and I shall get to know each other better. Please.” He shook Boris’s hand.
“You know, I have never been at the count’s house before. He has never invited me. I feel sorry for him, as a man … But what can be done?” said Boris, smiling with cheerful good-nature. “And do you think Napoleon will manage to ferry his army across?” he asked.
Pierre realised that Boris wanted to change the subject and, feeling the same way, began to expound the advantages and disadvantages of the Boulogne undertaking.
A manservant came to summon Boris to his mother, the princess. The princess was leaving. Pierre promised to come to dinner and then, in order to become closer friends with Boris, he shook his hand firmly, gazing affectionately into his eyes through his spectacles … When Boris left, Pierre continued to walk round the room for a long while, no longer running through an invisible enemy with a sword, but instead smiling at the recollection of this likeable, intelligent and resolute young man.
As happens in early youth, and especially when one is lonely, Pierre felt an irrational affection for this young man and resolved to become friends with him.
Prince Vasily was seeing off the princess. The princess was holding a handkerchief and her face was wet with tears.
“It is terrible! Terrible!” she said. “But no matter what it might cost me, I shall perform my duty. I shall come to spend the night. He cannot be left like this. Every minute is precious. I do not understand why the princesses are delaying. Perhaps God will help me find the means to prepare him! Goodbye, prince, may God give you strength …”
“Goodbye, my dear,” replied Prince Vasily, turning away from her.
“Ah, he is in a terrible state,” the mother said to her son as they were getting back into the carriage. “He hardly recognises anybody. Perhaps it will be for the best.”
“I do not understand, dear mama, what is his attitude to Pierre?” her son asked.
“The will will reveal all, my friend, our fate depends on it too …”
“But what makes you think he will leave us anything at all?”
“Ah, my friend! He is so rich and we are so poor!”
“That is still not sufficient reason, dear mama.”
“Oh, my God! My God! How pitiful he is!” exclaimed his mother.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lev-tolstoy/war-and-peace-original-version/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy
An alternative version – the one Tolstoy originally intended, but has been hitherto unpublished – of Russia’s most famous novel; with a different ending, fewer digressions and an altered view of Napoleon – it’s time to look afresh at one of the world’s favourite books.‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece – a panoramic portrait of Russian society and its descent into the Napoleonic Wars which for over a century has inspired reverential devotion among its readers.This version is certain to provoke controversy and devotion in equal measures. A ‘first draft’ of the epic version known to all, it was completed in 1866 but never published. A closely guarded secret for a century and a half, the unveiling of the original version of ‘War and Peace’, with an ending different to that we all know, is of huge significance to students of Tolstoy. But it is also sure to prove fascinating to the general reader who will find it an invigorating and absorbing read. Free of the solemn philosophical wanderings, the drama and tragedy of this sweeping tale is reinforced. His characters remain central throughout, emphasising their own personal journeys, their loves and passions, their successes and failures and their own personal tragedies.500 pages shorter, this is historical fiction at its most vivid and vital, and readers will marvel anew at Tolstoy’s unique ability to conjure the lives and souls of Russia and the Russians in all their glory. For devotees who long for more, for those who struggled and didn’t quite make it to the end, or for those who have always wanted to know what all the fuss is about, this is essential reading.
War and Peace
Original Version
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
Introduction by Nikolai Tolstoy
Contents
Cover (#u962b2934-ba4d-5975-95ef-b57b014a225d)
Title Page
Introduction
A Note on the Translation
Table of Russian Weights and Measures
List of Illustrations
Part I
I
“Eh bien, mon prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now…
II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room began filling up little by little.
III
Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was in full swing. On various sides…
IV
This new person was the young Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband…
V
Anna Pavlovna requested the vicomte to wait while she showed…
VI
The end of the vicomte’s story went as follows:
VII
“The entire nation will die for its Emperor, for the…
VIII
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soirée, the guests…
IX
Reaching the house first, Pierre, as if he lived there,…
X
A woman’s dress rustled in the next room. As if…
XI
The friends were silent. Neither said a word. Pierre kept…
XII
It was after one in the morning when Pierre left…
XIII
Prince Vasily kept the promise that he had made to…
XIV
Silence fell. The countess looked at her guest with a…
XV
Of the young people, aside from the countess’s elder daughter,…
XVI
When Natasha came out of the drawing room and started…
XVII
The countess felt so tired after the visits that she…
XVIII
In the drawing room the conversation was continuing.
XIX
“My dear Boris,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said to her son…
XX
Boris, thanks to his placid and reserved character, was never…
XXI
When Anna Mikhailovna and her son left to go to…
XXII
Countess Rostova and her daughter and an already large number…
XXIII
It was that moment before a formal dinner when the…
XXIV
Natasha was clearly unable to sit still. She pinched her…
XXV
The card tables had all been set up, parties sat…
XXVI
Meanwhile Natasha, running first into Sonya’s room and not finding…
XXVII
Natasha whispered to Nikolai that Vera had just upset Sonya…
XXVIII
While at the Rostovs’ house they were dancing the sixth…
XXIX
While these conversations were taking place in the reception room…
XXX
Pierre knew this large room, divided by columns and an…
XXXI
There was no longer anyone in the reception room apart…
XXXII
At Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky,…
XXXIII
Princess Marya went back to her room with the sad,…
XXXIV
The grey-haired valet was dozing in his chair, listening to…
XXXV
When the twenty minutes remaining until the time for the…
XXXVI
“Well now, Mikhail Ivanovich, our Buonaparte is having a hard…
XXXVII
Prince Andrei was leaving in the evening of the next…
Part II
I
In October 1805, Russian forces were occupying the villages and…
II
“He’s coming!” a signalman shouted at just that moment.
III
The regiment broke up into companies and set out for…
IV
On returning from the review, Kutuzov went through into his…
V
The Pavlograd Hussars Regiment was stationed two miles from Braunau.
VI
Kutuzov withdrew towards Vienna, destroying the bridges on the rivers…
VII
Two enemy shots had already flown over the bridge, and…
VIII
The remaining infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, funnelling in tightly…
IX
After crossing the bridge, one after another the two squadrons…
X
Pursued by a French army of a hundred thousand men…
XI
Prince Andrei went on to the house of the Russian…
XII
The following morning he woke late. Reviewing his impression of…
XIII
The Emperor Franz approached Prince Andrei, who was standing in…
XIV
That same night, having taken his leave of the war…
XV
On the 1st of November Kutuzov had received, via one…
XVI
Between three and four in the afternoon Prince Andrei, having…
XVII
“Eh bien,” Prince Andrei said to himself, “the Army of…
XVIII
Prince Andrei halted his horse at the battery, surveying the…
XIX
Prince Bagration, having ridden up to the very highest point…
XX
The attack by the Sixth Chasseurs made it possible for…
XXI
The infantry regiments, caught by surprise in the forest, were…
XXII
Tushin’s battery had been forgotten, and it was only at…
XXIII
The wind died down and black clouds hung low over…
XXIV
“Who are they? Why are they here? What do they…
Part III
I
Prince Vasily did not brood over his plans, any more…
II
After Pierre and Hélène’s wedding, the old prince Nikolai Andreevich…
III
The Rostovs had had no news about Nikolai for a…
IV
On the 12th of November Kutuzov’s active army, camped near…
V
The day after Boris’s meeting with Rostov, there was a…
VI
The day after the review Boris, dressed up in his…
VII
That very day there had been a council of war…
VIII
On the 15th of November the allied army advanced from…
IX
Before dawn the next day, Denisov’s squadron, in which Nikolai…
X
The following day the sovereign remained at Wischau. His physician-in-ordinary…
XI
After nine in the evening Weierother moved on with his…
XII
It was after one in the morning when Rostov, sent…
XIII
It was nine o’clock in the morning. The fog extended…
XIV
The plan for the Battle of Austerlitz had been drawn…
XV
At the beginning of the battle Prince Bagration, reluctant to…
XVI
By five o’clock in the evening the battle had been…
XVII
Prince Andrei was lying on Pratzen Hill, still at the…
XVIII
At the beginning of 1806, Nikolai Rostov went home on…
XIX
The following day, the 3rd of March, after one o’clock…
XX
The following day at Sokolniki Pierre, as absent-minded as ever,…
XXI
Recently Pierre had only seen his wife at night or…
XXII
Two months had passed since Bleak Hills received news of…
XXIII
“Ma bonne amie,” the little princess said after breakfast on…
XXIV
The impression of the first war with Napoleon was still…
XXV
Despite the sovereign’s strict attitude to duellists at that time,…
XXVI
Two days after clarifying things with his wife, Pierre went…
XXVII
The matter between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and,…
XXVIII
In 1807 Pierre finally set off on a tour of…
XXIX
After his three-week sojourn in the country, concerning which he…
XXX
In 1807 life at Bleak Hills had changed little, except…
XXXI
Although the final debt of forty-two thousand, taken on to…
XXXII
The sovereign was in residence at Bartenstein. The army was…
XXXIII
Boris had found himself a position with the Emperor’s staff…
XXXXIV
After the Friedland disaster, Nikolai Rostov had been left as…
Part IV
I
No one mentioned “Buonaparte”, the Corsican upstart and Antichrist, any…
II
With the exception of a short visit to St. Petersburg,…
III
On arriving in St. Petersburg in 1809, Prince Andrei ordered…
IV
Prince Andrei was a novelty in St. Petersburg. His claim…
V
In the evening, after leaving the countess’s drawing room, Pierre…
VI
The Rostovs’ financial affairs had not been restored during the…
VII
Natasha, having lived in solitude in the country for the…
VIII
Prince Andrei arrived in St. Peterburg in August 1809. At…
IX
The day after his visit to Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrei…
X
There were many reasons that had led Pierre to this…
XI
On the 31st of December, the eve of the New…
XII
The following day Prince Andrei woke up and smiled, without…
XIII
For four days Prince Andrei did not go to the…
XIV
The morning after her bed-time discussion with her mother, when…
XV
Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and his daughter spent that winter…
Part V
I
The Biblical tradition has it that the absence of labour…
II
It was the 12th of September. There were already early…
III
About five male house serfs, both big and little, came…
IV
In the late autumn another letter was received from Prince…
V
The Yuletide season arrived. Besides the festive liturgy, at which…
VI
Natasha was the first to set the tone of Yuletide…
VII
The love between Prince Andrei and Natasha and their happiness…
VIII
At the beginning of winter, Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky and…
IX
In 1811 a French doctor acquired rapid fashionability in Moscow.
X
Pierre’s suppositions concerning Boris were correct. Boris could not make…
XI
The Rostovs arrived in early February. Natasha had never been…
XII
That evening the Rostovs went to the theatre. Natasha had…
XIII
In the year of 1811, life in Moscow was very…
XIV
The brightly lit drawing room at the Bezukhovs’ house was…
XV
After his first meeting with Natasha in Moscow, Pierre had…
Part VI
I
In the spring of 1812, Prince Andrei was in Turkey,…
II
The count was in despair. He wrote to send for…
III
“My brother sovereign!” Napoleon wrote in the spring of 1812…
IV
On the 11th of June at eleven o’clock in the…
V
The Russian Emperor and his court had already been living…
VI
As he despatched Balashov, the sovereign repeated yet again his…
VII
The gloomy soldier Davout was the complete opposite of Murat.
VIII
After Balashov had spent four days in solitude, boredom and…
IX
After his meeting with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrei went…
X
Prince Andrei reached army Central Headquarters on the 13th of…
XI
While Prince Andrei was living on the Drissa with nothing…
XII
Before the start of the campaign, when the regiment was…
XIII
More than a year had passed since Natasha had rejected…
XIV
As promised, Pierre came to dinner straight from Count Rostopchin’s…
XV
On the twelfth the sovereign arrived in Moscow and from…
Part VII
I
What had to happen was bound to happen. Just as…
II
After Prince Andrei’s departure, the old Prince Bolkonsky’s daughter observed…
III
Among the countless categories of all the phenomena of life,…
IV
While this was taking place in St. Petersburg, the French…
V
“The bird returned to its native fields” galloped to the…
VI
Between four and five in the evening that day, long…
VII
On taking command of the armies, Kutuzov remembered Prince Andrei…
VIII
On the 24th of August the French Emperor’s chamberlain, de…
IX
The Shevardino redoubt was attacked on the evening of the…
X
After the sovereign left Moscow, when that first moment of…
XI
On that clear evening of the 25th of August, Prince…
XII
At six o’clock it was light. It was a grey…
XIII
Prince Andrei was in the reserves, who had been firing…
XIV
After the Battle of Borodino, immediately after the battle, the…
XV
The following day Napoleon stood on Poklonnaya Hill and looked…
XVI
The two princesses (the third had married long ago) had…
XVII
In St. Petersburg, after the sovereign’s arrival from Moscow, many…
XVIII
On the 1st of October, on the feast of the…
XIX
In the middle of September the Rostovs and their transport…
XX
After the enemy’s entry into Moscow and the reports denouncing…
XXI
During this period, when all the French wanted was to…
XXII
Pierre was with this depot among the prisoners. On the…
XXIII
One of the first people Andrei met in the army…
About the Author and Translator
Praise
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
LEO TOLSTOY Photograph, Moscow, 1868 (#ulink_60b02ed4-1e4e-5de7-9fbc-813e9344b806)
INTRODUCTION
Ben Jonson is said to have criticized Shakespeare when told that ‘hee never blotted out line’, and Sir Walter Scott was similarly an author who wrote with extraordinary rapidity and accuracy. Leo Tolstoy, in contrast, regularly rewrote and restructured much of his work, on occasion spending years immersed in elaborate correction. It is not surprising, therefore, that War and Peace, the longest major Russian novel ever written, occupied the greater part of the decade 1863 to 1873. He had been mulling over the potential of an historical novel some years before that, but his earliest drafts for the book dating from 1863 show that it was then that he decided to write a work whose setting would be the dramatic events associated with Russia’s wars against Napoleon. Two years later he published the first section in the literary journal Russkii Vestnik under the title 1805, and the second entitled War appeared a year later in 1866.
Although Tolstoy’s prime concern lay with exploration of human character, he was fascinated by the grand drama of historical events. He had experienced war in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Crimea, and from a cheerfully unreflecting Russian patriot he became increasingly concerned to discover the underlying rationale of a phenomenon which perversely legitimated lying, spying, murder, cruelty, and rapine on a grand scale – vices which civil society is at pains to suppress. Conventional historians of the day recounted events in terms of grand strategy carried out by commanders executing complex manoeuvres, which proved successful or unsuccessful according to their talents and those of their adversaries. Tolstoy – who had known at first hand the smoke, din, fire, terror, and heady intoxication of battle – saw in contrast only the interplay of confusion, chance, and a multitude of disparate factors far beyond the capacity of individuals to control or even understand.
All this is well known: what is less so is the extent to which Tolstoy pursued painstaking researches as an historical novelist. His best biographer, the Englishman Aylmer Maude, suggested that War and Peace was not an historical novel in the true sense, since the age in which his story is set remained within the memory of his parents’ generation. But this is to do Tolstoy an injustice. His notes and correspondence illustrate the remarkable extent to which he sought to reconstruct the past, whether pacing the battlefield at Borodino or investigating recondite details ranging from the extent to which men still wore hair powder in 1805 to the fact that the copse in which Pierre Bezukhov and Dolokhov fought their duel was pine rather than birch.
One of Tolstoy’s major problems was that of establishing the precise nature of his genre. As he explained to Katkov, the editor of Russkii Vestnik, in January 1865: ‘the work is not a novel and is not a story, and cannot have the sort of plot whose interest ends with the dénouement.
I am writing this in order to ask you not to call my work a novel in the table of contents, or perhaps in the advertisement either. This is very important to me, and I particularly request it of you’.
Those sections which appeared in 1865 and 1866 were but the introduction to a much larger work, which by the end of 1866 he believed he had completed. Over the previous six months he had written 726 pages of manuscript, which he felt brought the work to a satisfactory conclusion. His pleasure in writing was intense, and as he explained later he ‘generally enjoyed good spirits’, and on days when his work had gone well, he would gleefully announce that he had left ‘a bit of my life in the inkstand’.
It is this version which comprises the present work, which was first made available to the Russian general reader seven years ago, and is here presented for the first time in English. The title Tolstoy proposed was All’s Well That Ends Well, from which it may be correctly inferred that it had a happy ending. There can be no doubt that he intended this version to be published, for which he engaged as illustrator a talented artist named Nikolai Sergeievich Bashilov. Tolstoy and Bashilov enjoyed a close and constructive collaboration. Thus when the author explained that he had based the character of Natasha in large part on his sister-in-law Tatiana, the artist’s task was the easier since he was her uncle. Sadly, Bashilov’s increasing illness made it ever harder for him to meet insistent deadlines imposed by the author and publisher, and at the end of 1870 he died while undergoing a health cure in the Tyrol. Consequently the early editions of the novel remain unillustrated, and it was not until 1893 that an able successor to Bashilov was found in the form of Leonid Pasternak, father of the novelist Boris.
War and Peace ‘as we know it’ was published in six volumes in 1868–69. By that time Tolstoy had extensively revised All’s Well That Ends Well, radically altering its conclusion and carrying the story forward in part as a reminder that life does not come to a gratifying halt with marriage. Two years later he wrote disparagingly: ‘I’ve stopped writing, and will never again write verbose nonsense like War and Peace. I’m guilty, but I swear I’ll never do it again’. However he had not reached the end of his creative activity, and in 1873 set about further extensive restructuring. ‘I’ve started to prepare a second edition of War and Peace and to strike out what is superfluous – some things need to be struck out altogether, others to be removed and printed separately’, he wrote to a literary friend in March. ‘And if you can remember, remind me of what is bad. I’m afraid to touch it, because there is so much that is bad in my eyes that I would want to write it again after refurbishing it’.
Even this was not the end of the story, for when his wife came to issue a fresh collected edition of his works in 1886 it was the 1868–69 version that she chose. Whether this was Tolstoy’s choice remains unknown, but he can scarcely have disapproved. This illustrates the extent to which he envisaged his creation as a living entity subject to continual modification, and confirms the desirability of making public the first version he completed. Whether the final ‘canonical’ edition represents an improvement must be left to readers to judge, and the present publication at last provides means of effecting the comparison.
Those who have never read War and Peace will be able to enjoy experiencing Tolstoy’s first heady production of that wonderful work, and those who have will undergo the stimulating experience of being able to compare it with its predecessor. Apart from the truncated conclusion, attentive readers will note many differences of detail and emphasis. My own interest was particularly aroused by subtle variations in the treatment of Dolokhov, the bold and on occasion cruel lover of Pierre’s faithless wife Hélène. Based on Tolstoy’s cousin, the noted duellist and adventurer Feodor Ivanovich Tolstoy, whose larger-than-life personality clearly fascinated the novelist, he erupts as another fictional counterpart into the marvellous short story ‘Two Hussars’, where in the space of twenty-four hours he turns upside down the sleepy life of a provincial town. The writer was fortunate in possessing a family and friends preeminently adaptable to the most exotic of fictive requirements.
As he wrote to his cousin Alexandra, a lady in waiting to the Empress, during the writing of All’s Well That Ends Well: ‘you possess that Tolstoyan wildness that’s common to us all. Not for nothing did Feodor Ivanovich have himself tattooed’. His words might have as aptly been applied to the larger-than-life author himself.
Nikolai Tolstoy, 2007
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
Like most literary classics, War and Peace has generated a long and distinguished tradition of English translations. But while most are based on the ‘classical’ 1500-page text, the present translation is based on an earlier, shorter text that is now being translated into English for the first time.
This shorter Russian text was brought out in 2000 by the Moscow publisher Igor Zakharov as ‘the first complete edition of the great novel War and Peace’. His edition, however, was in fact derived from an earlier edition which, although unknown to the world at large, had long been familiar to literary specialists as the first draft, recovered by the Tolstoy scholar Evelina E. Zaidenshnur. This text, together with a 60-page commentary, had been published as a scholarly monograph in 1983, in vol. 94 of the Academy of Sciences journal Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), although much of the material had appeared earlier still in the 90-volume Jubilee edition of Tolstoy’s Collected Works.
Evelina Zaidenshnur’s reconstruction was an extraordinary achievement, the fruit of fifty years’ painstaking paleographical detective work in the massive archive held by the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow. This work had culminated in the first, full working version whose last page contains the word: ‘Konets’ or ‘The End’. Known to have reached completion in December 1866, this draft had soon been dispersed in the process of rewriting that began shortly after. Zaidenshnur’s text was a mosaic of manuscripts retrieved from across the archive and reassembled through the careful matching of Tolstoy’s original handwriting, ink and paper and close examination of his numerous notebooks, diaries and letters for clues and references to the work in progress.
Zaidenshnur’s edition offers us a coherent narrative which, despite its occasional roughness and sketchiness and obvious differences, is often as polished and fine as the later, canonical version. Inevitably, however, in the long process of deciphering several thousands of pages of impenetrable scrawl, crisscrossed with cancellations, messily overwritten and with scribbled additions ballooning into the margins, there were errors and oversights in transcription. Words were misread, sentences misplaced. Nevertheless, as befitted a scholarly enterprise, the text included multiple variants in brackets (cancelled words as well as alternative readings) and the entire project was described in meticulous depth. It was this essentially academic text, shorn of its scholarly apparatus and its variants, somewhat rewritten and with none of its original French, that was re-issued in 2000 by Zakharov as ‘the first’ War and Peace, and promoted as ‘half the usual length, less war and more peace, no philosophical digressions’, and so on. Although the English translation that follows is based largely on that edition, frequent reference has also been made to Zaidenshnur’s edition as well as the later ‘classical’ text.
Claiming this as the ‘original’ War and Peace, might, as one reviewer remarked, ‘cause purists to wince’. This version is not, however, intended as substitute for the canonical version so much as its complement, rather as a brilliant sketch, or series of sketches, stands in relation to the final canvas of a great masterpiece. Complete if unpolished, this version still offers authentic delights, especially to those readers new to Tolstoy (and for whom there await all the greater pleasures of the longer text). Many familiar scenes – the Rostovs’ banquet, the hunt, the dancing, for example – are already here, although they will later be placed in settings of altogether grander, more universal proportions. Devotees and scholars (above all those unable to read the original Russian) will value this version meanwhile for the rare insights it offers into the ‘creative laboratory’ of a consummate artist. Close comparison will point to the scattered phrases in the one that blossom into major themes and characters (such as Platon Karataev) in the other. Or reveal how elements in the early draft are cast aside, redeployed, or amplified in the ruthless process of reshaping, refining and rearranging that duly occurs on the large scale and the small. Sympathies switch from one figure to another; attributes migrate; names are reassigned; a single character splits into two, while several meld into one; new faces enter, others depart. And while the storyline takes significant new turns, so the weave of its telling grows increasingly intricate. The creation of War and Peace, as R.F. Christian and K. Feuer have shown, was dynamic in process – there was no exact plan, it evolved in the writing: Tolstoy’s unfolding philosophy would shape his narrative as much as the narrative would shape his philosophy. After several false starts (which would all leave their traces), new ideas would be tried out continually as each draft was refashioned. The difference in treatment is most apparent in the endings, where the hastily outlined ‘happy’ ending of this first full version gives way to closing scenes that subtly recapitulate the grand themes which resonate throughout the mature work – life and death, peace and war, and so on – and suggest continuity rather than conclusion. This early draft, then, catches the work at a crucial stage in its development, just when Tolstoy was poised to expand his core text into what would finally emerge as the War and Peace that we know.
In accordance with the convention of the day Tolstoy, even before his draft was complete, had already submitted the opening parts for publication, and three instalments, under the overall title 1805, appeared in 1865 and 1866 in the journal Russkii Vestnik (Russian Herald). However, conceiving his work as a single entity, Tolstoy abandoned serial publication. The end of his first full draft was reached in December 1866, but dissatisfied with its scope, Tolstoy withdrew to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, took a break over the new year holidays and then embarked on three further years of intense research and rewriting, during which he would gradually transform what was now more or less a family chronicle (and which he considered calling All’s Well That Ends Well) into the monumental epic that would be entitled War and Peace. Over the next few years Tolstoy travelled to battle sites, devoured memoirs and histories, and talked with old soldiers who could still recall the events of their youth. His finished text, amplified and elaborated, would be almost twice its original length.
Although the full-length version was initially published in six volumes between 1868 and 1869, it would undergo yet further extensive revision before appearing in 1873 as the single, four-volume set that Tolstoy had originally envisaged. This second edition of 1873 is regarded by some as the most authoritative. However, Tolstoy continued to make changes in subsequent editions, adjusting details of style, translating the many passages of French into Russian, rearranging the text and removing the more intrusive of his philosophical digressions to a separate section at the end. The divisions into volumes, parts and chapters differed with each edition. Moreover, by the 1880s, Tolstoy had lost interest in the publication of his own work and handed his copyrights to his wife, Sofia, and she failed to ensure that earlier amendments were incorporated into later editions. Thus among the six editions that came out between 1868 and 1886, no two are alike, and a consensus has never been reached as to which of them is best or definitive.
Further complications dog the question of an ‘authorised’ version. Tolstoy’s wife had copied the entire work out seven times in the course of its composition, but along the way had acted as editor, making her own changes, and censoring and suppressing whatever could be deemed offensive or dangerous. Others had a hand in this too, but – odd as it may seem today – this was done with Tolstoy’s agreement.
His attitude should be placed in context. In Russia, because political and philosophical ideas were denied open public debate, they found expression in literature and poetry, and while this resulted in a uniquely rich body of work freighted with powerful allusions, the poets and writers themselves were turned into potential subversives with state censors routinely scrutinising their every word. Hence we find Tolstoy telling his editor P.I. Bartenev on 6 December 1867: ‘I give you carte blanche to cross out everything that strikes you as dangerous. You know better than I what is possible and what is not.’ And again on 8 December 1867: ‘… I am beginning to fear that censorship or the printers could give us nasty trouble. I place my only hope about these two matters in you.’
Tolstoy’s very earliest attempts, during the 1850s, at what would become War and Peace were clearly engaged with the politics of his own day. His initial central figure was an ageing Decembrist revolutionary (an older Pierre Bezukhov) returning to Russia from exile after serving his sentence for participating in the unsuccessful uprising of December 1825 (from which came the name ‘Decembrist’). To portray him in depth, however, Tolstoy saw that he needed to understand his hero’s youth. This had been shaped by the year 1812, when Russia had rejoiced at the disaster of Napoleon’s failed invasion. Yet that year could not be separated from 1807 and 1805, when it had been Russia’s turn to be shamed by Napoleon, this time in direct military defeat. Thus Tolstoy’s focus had kept pushing ever further back from his own time to that of his grandfather, and in the end his narrative would deal with those early years alone. What came to concern him were not historic events in themselves so much as the continuity, the cyclicity, of ideas: although centred on Russia’s confrontation with Napoleon, the book’s main sweep of action is framed by the unseen French revolution which has taken place before the story opens and the Decembrist uprising which will take place after it ends. Both are signalled in the ardent aspirations of the young: first in Pierre who has returned from post-revolutionary Paris, then in Andrei’s young son, who eagerly eavesdrops on political talk that heralds the forthcoming change. Tolstoy’s contemporaries (as well as the censors) could easily catch these implications and read this apparent work of history as a comment on their own times. In his great transformation, Tolstoy’s point of departure had become his point of arrival.
The more he researched the intricacies of the past, the more Tolstoy came to distrust accepted histories with their false view of great men and great events. As his perspective lengthened, so it widened from the life of a single individual to encompass the interwoven fates of whole families and the destinies of nations. The scope likewise broadened beyond his own social class of princes and emperors to include all Russian society down to the peasants and common soldiers, whom he would duly regard as the bedrock of wisdom and patriotism. With his mass of personal evidence and detailed reminiscence, Tolstoy blended fact with fiction until the two could barely be told apart: mythic figures from history were brought to life as convincingly as his imaginary inventions, all invested alike with well documented words and actions and animated by incisive psychological insight. Tolstoy taught lessons in reading as well as in life: what looks significant here will be insignificant there, what seemed trivial before seems important after. In the teeming tumult of life, in the unstoppable onrush of events no one can ever know or determine his or her place or fate.
These philosophical reflections were shaped into essays and discursive digressions that were initially incorporated into the flow of the narrative (but were later amended or removed). Yet War and Peace is more than just story and lecture: the texture itself embodies the philosophy that it expounds. Keen to free himself from novelistic constraints, Tolstoy turned his creation into what Henry James would disparage as a ‘loose baggy monster’, a vast web of the ‘accidental and the arbitrary’. But apparent inconsistencies turn out to be continuous threads that form and reform in a stream of flux and inconsequence: the lives of central figures are revealed at significant moments in sharply observed episodes; bystanders are briefly caught by the limelight, then vanish for ever in the flow of the text. Even the central characters flourish and fade as we turn the pages. The reader thus turns spectator, immersed, watching, puzzling, remembering, the process of reading akin to living itself. What strikes us as strange – some unexplained personage here, some name mentioned there – may be part of the overall design, the text consciously rendered as random and unfathomable as human existence.
It is hard, however, to distinguish intentionality from inadvertence in an early draft such as this. While the anomalies in Zaidenshnur’s edition are usually ascribed to the misreading of manuscript, some of them might not be outright mistakes but rather the tentative signs of Tolstoy’s developing ideas. Although the more obvious anomalies have been corrected, some still remain in the Zakharov edition. Should these be conveyed into English, or seamlessly resolved, and if so, how? The loyalties of a translation are always torn between the future reader and the past source. The present translation treads a fine line between the two, sometimes offering close recreations, warts (so to speak) and all, but at other times making minor adjustments, which often means bringing the text anachronistically into line with the canonical version. The following illustrates a minor adjustment. In a sentence that occurs in both early drafts, but is cut from the canonical version, Pierre, at the English Club, drinks something called ‘Alito Margo’. This non-existent potion was clearly a misreading of Tolstoy’s Russian scrawl for ‘Château Margaux’, a French wine that was probably unknown to scholars in the Soviet period, but has been rendered thus in the English.
In occasional places, to bridge puzzling jumps that occur in the source texts, words have been added in square brackets for the sake of continuity.
Those familiar with the canonical War and Peace may wonder about the general absence of French from this edition, that language having constituted some 2.5 per cent of Tolstoy’s original text. Accurately depicting the period in which the book is set, Tolstoy shows the Russian upper classes complacently writing and conversing in French, but this conceals an irony, for he also shows not only how the speaking of French alienated the aristocracy from their own native people, but also how it compromised their declared allegiance when Russia was at war with France.
Whereas Zaidenshnur (1983) faithfully reproduces all the French from Tolstoy’s original manuscripts, the Zakharov version (2000) translates every word into Russian. This is less contentious than it might seem, for Tolstoy himself, when criticised for featuring so much French in his first edition of 1868–9, translated it all into Russian for the second edition of 1873. He also employed various compensatory techniques, telling the reader, for example, that someone was speaking in French when the words themselves were Russian. Posthumous editions would in due course restore the French to the main text and relegate Tolstoy’s Russian translations to footnotes. Soviet editions with the French were called ‘classical’, while cheaper ‘popular’ editions remained all-Russian.
But questions of readability aside, the loss of French deprives the text of a crucial subtlety, for Tolstoy constantly uses language as a gauge of sincerity and realism: French signals artificiality and remoteness, Russian signals integrity and groundedness, and folk idiom true earthy wisdom.
English translations have seldom reproduced all, if any, of the French. The present version restores it in ‘gestural’ form only (eh bien! O dieu!), to give a flavour of its original presence and remind the reader of its impact.
Names in Tolstoy present special problems. In the original manuscripts the names of chief protagonists are French throughout – André, Nicolas, Pierre and so on – although affectionate forms are always Russianised. The present translation uses the Russian forms Andrei and Nikolai, for example, but retains the French Hélène and Pierre, partly because of their uniqueness in the wider literary tradition. Transliteration of foreign words aims for readerly access rather than scholarly precision.
Place names follow Tolstoy’s idiosyncratic usage and most of his odd, unexplained names of people and apparently inconsistent dates or ages have been left. At that period, Russians used the Julian calendar, which was twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar then in general use elsewhere in Europe. But historical accuracy was of little concern to Tolstoy, and he wrote: ‘An historian and an artist describing an historic epoch have two quite different tasks before them.’ And given the deliberately distorted, impressionistic quality of certain passages, such details as the age assigned to a character seem to be not so much chronologically precise as approximations in development and mentality.
Tolstoy’s spelling is erratic but has generally been regularised. However, the alternate spellings of Bonaparte/Buonaparte follow the original draft exactly, for they subtly register the Russians’ changing view of the French leader’s repeated self-inventions, tracing the rise of this ‘upstart’ from low-born Corsican soldier (Buonaparte) to French general (Bonaparte) to Emperor (Napoleon). Russians would have perceived an audible difference between the derisively drawled vowel-sounds of Italian ‘Bu-o-na-par-te’, and the contemptuous snort of the French ‘Bonaparte’.
Finally we come to the slightly vexed question of Tolstoy’s style. Tolstoy was an experimental writer who rejected the nineteenth century novel with its conventions and pretensions, above all to authorial invisibility. He wished to convey widely differing experiential effects, many of them rooted in the visual: his writing is often craggy and rough, yet it achieves a piercing clarity that is as merciless as it is miraculous. This relentless percipience is relieved by softer moments of impressionism, such as his famous false-naive technique of ‘ostranenie’ or ‘defamiliarisation’ (numbingly tragic on the battlefield, wryly comic in the theatre). Similarly impressionistic are the long, winding sentences with their many clauses that hasten along in the recreation of swiftly passing time. Sometimes the slipping syntax that results from this haste has been corrected in English, but sometimes it has been left, true to the original. Such slippage could well be part of Tolstoy’s deliberate deformations. His generally hurtling manner has a brusqueness and vigour that purposely fly in the face of literary forebears (especially the gentilities of Turgenev, with whom he quarrelled). His use of the same unvarying adjective throughout a single passage, in grand disregard for fine style, creates an unrepentant hammering effect in Russian but raises problems in English, which abhors repetition of this kind. Whilst the present translation introduces small variations in the name of stylistic euphony, it occasionally mimics that repetition to enable readers to feel the force and strangeness of the original. Time and again Tolstoy insisted that this work was neither a novel nor a poem nor a history, and he would have loathed the idea of its being recast in translation as the very thing, a neat and tidy story, that he so strenuously sought to avoid.
Tolstoy’s presence in the text is felt everywhere, but especially in his use of the parenthetical aside, whereby the authorial voice suddenly and unashamedly disrupts the story to offer a comment or explanation, revealing a contempt for the very artifice of fiction with which it is beguiling us. In the Russian, this change of voice mid-dialogue carries no warning punctuation, but in the translation it is isolated by the usual marks. In this, as in so many other respects, Tolstoy’s virtuoso brilliance prefigures the modernists of the twentieth century: Vladimir Nabokov, for example, writing in English almost a hundred years later, would perfect the art of parenthesis with his famous: ‘(picnic, lightning)’, but well before that Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf were just two among the many whose admiration had taken the sincerest form it could, that of imitation. The present translation has tried to convey some of the special qualities that make this early version of War and Peace, written with the energy of an artist who was still feeling his way to greatness, so deserving of our close attention.
Jenefer Coates
Editor
Andrew Bromfield
Translator
Table of Russian Weights and Measures
Approximate equivalents of old Russian measurements:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Leo Tolstoy. Photograph, Moscow 1868. (#ulink_467fd2a2-8140-5af1-81cc-f800f4d00ac2)
Tolstoy. Photograph, 1862. (#ulink_e3430692-b7c8-502f-80aa-5d4e1a3598e9)
Prince Vasily. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_b7c1b77b-269c-534f-a926-70e7d4e458c8)
The Little Princess. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_a4860cbb-39c9-580c-a781-d4ae5249f355)
Pierre Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_bd0a91a5-2104-583e-a31e-107ee70be783)
Hippolyte Kuragin. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_27bf97fe-f0d6-5691-bfa1-f4c3084f7f06)
Pierre Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_25aaffe7-a559-58e0-9580-a0777e95272f)
Dolokhov’s Wager with the Englishman. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_6c3a25e4-6426-559e-8e64-d40a45f52866)
Sonya. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_bf8eb500-5570-572c-8f78-4ea93cce1d8c)
Natasha Rostov and Boris Drubetskoy. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_1b747fd3-838d-556b-a208-0e0165b49c39)
Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya and her son Boris. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866. (#ulink_6df01836-3345-565f-b8d0-99fc17fe9202)
Dancing the Daniel Cooper. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Death of Count Bezukhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Struggle for the Document Case. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
The Maths Lesson. Wood engraving by K.I. Rikhai after the drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866.
Kutuzov. Engraving by Cardelli.
The Military Review: Kutuzov and Dolokhov. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Russian Army Marching Across the River Enns. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Napoleon in 1807. Engraving by Debucourt.
Bilibin. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Prince Andrei and Emperor Franz. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Wounded Rostov at the Campfire. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1867.
Battle of Austerlitz on 2 December 1805. Engraving by Bosque after the drawing by Charles Vernet.
The Meeting of the Two Emperors at Tilsit on 25 June 1807. Engraving by Couché fils after the drawing by Zwiebach.
Natasha Dancing at the Uncle’s House. Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1860s, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.
Smolensk, 20 August 1812. Lithograph.
The Battle of Borodino. Lithograph by Albrecht Adam.
A sheet of Manuscript 107.
Final sheet of Manuscript 107: “The End”.
PART I
TOLSTOY Photograph 1862 Autograph on mounting: “1862. I took this myself. Count L.N. Tolstoy. Photograph at Yasnaya Polyana.” (#ulink_699644f9-5dcc-5ac8-9d2a-4624531e85c5)
I
“Eh bien, mon prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now merely estates, the private estates of the Buonaparte family. Non, I warn you, if you don’t say this means war, if you still defend all these vile acts, all these atrocities by an Antichrist (for I really do believe he is the Antichrist), then I no longer know you, you are no longer mon ami, you are no longer, as you put it, my devoted slave. But, anyway, how do you do, how are you? I see I am frightening you, do come and sit down and tell me what’s going on.”
These were the words with which, in July 1805, the renowned Anna Pavlovna Scherer, lady-in-waiting and confidante of the Empress Maria Fedorovna, greeted the influential and high-ranking Prince Vasily, who was the first to arrive at her soirée. Anna Pavlovna had been coughing for several days, and had what she called the grippe (grippe then being a new word, used only by the few), and therefore had not attended at court nor even left the house. All of the notes she had sent out in the morning with a scarlet-liveried servant had contained the same message, without variation:
If, Count (or Prince), you have nothing better to do, and the prospect of an evening in the company of a poor invalid is not too alarming, then I should be delighted to see you at home between seven and ten o’clock.
Annette Scherer.
“Dieu, what a fierce attack!” replied the prince with a faint smile, not in the least perturbed by this reception as he entered, wearing his embroidered court dress-coat, with knee-breeches, low shoes and starry decorations, and a serene expression on his cunning face.
He spoke that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke, but also thought, and with the gently modulated, patronising intonation that was natural to a man of consequence who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna and kissed her hand, presenting to her the bald, perfumed top of his head, which gleamed white even between the grey hairs, then he calmly seated himself on the divan.
“First of all, tell me how you are feeling, ma chère amie? Do set your friend’s mind at rest,” he said, without changing his tone of voice, in which, beneath the decorum and sympathy, there was a hint of indifference and even mockery.
“How can you expect me to feel well, when one is suffering so, morally speaking? How can anyone with feeling stay calm in times like these?” said Anna Pavlovna. “You are here for the whole evening, I hope?”
“But what about the festivities at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I really do have to show my face,” said the prince. “My daughter will be calling to take me there.”
“I thought today’s celebrations had been cancelled. I do declare all these fêtes and fireworks are becoming an utter bore.”
“Had they but known you wished it, they would have cancelled the celebrations,” said the prince by force of habit, like a wound-up clock, voicing things that he did not even wish to be believed.
“Don’t tease me. Eh bien, what has been decided following this dispatch from Novosiltsev? You know everything.”
“What can I say?” the prince said in a cold, bored voice. “What has been decided? It has been decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and we are apparently prepared to burn ours too.”
Whether Prince Vasily’s words were wise or foolish, animated or indifferent, he uttered them in a tone that suggested he was repeating them for the thousandth time, like an actor speaking a part in an old play, as though the words were not the product of his reason, not spoken from the mind or heart, but by rote, with his lips alone.
By contrast, Anna Pavlovna Scherer, despite her forty years, was full of an impulsive vivacity which long practice had scarcely taught her to curb within the limits of courtly decorum and discretion. At every moment she seemed on the point of uttering something improper, yet although she came within a hair’s breadth, no impropriety ever burst forth. She was not good-looking, but the rapturous enthusiasm of which she herself was aware in her glance and in the vivacity of her smile, which expressed her infatuation with ideal causes, evidently furnished her with that quality which was called interesting. From Prince Vasily’s words and his expression it was clear that the circles in which they both moved had long ago adopted the unanimous opinion that Anna Pavlovna was a sweet, good-hearted enthusiast and patriot who dabbled in matters that were not entirely her concern and often took things to extremes, but was lovable for the sincerity and ardour of her feelings. Being an enthusiast had become her position in society, and sometimes, even when she did not really wish it, she played the enthusiast simply in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The restrained smile that played constantly on Anna Pavlovna’s face, although it did not become her faded features, was an expression, as it is in spoilt children, of a constant awareness of her own charming defect, of which she neither wished, nor was able, nor felt it necessary, to rid herself.
PRINCE VASILY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_4d6f7eb8-4910-59be-8e34-16d7c32ca43e)
The contents of the dispatch from Novosiltsev, who had set out to Paris for peace negotiations, were as follows.
On arriving in Berlin, Novosiltsev had learned that Bonaparte had issued a decree annexing the Genoese Republic to the French Empire, while at the same time he was declaring his desire for reconciliation with England through the mediation of Russia. Novosiltsev, having halted in Berlin on the surmise that such coercive action on the part of Bonaparte might well alter the Emperor’s intentions, had requested His Majesty’s decision on whether he should move on to Paris or return home. The reply to Novosiltsev had already been drawn up and was due to be forwarded the following day. The seizure of Genoa was the long-sought pretext for a declaration of war, to which the opinion of court society was even more readily inclined than the military. The reply stated: “We do not wish to conduct negotiations with a man who, while declaring his desire to make peace, continues with his encroachments.”
All this was the very latest news of the day. The prince evidently knew all these details from reliable sources and related them to the lady-in-waiting in jocular fashion.
“Well, and where have these negotiations led us?” Anna Pavlovna asked, continuing with the conversation, as before, in French. “And what is the point of all these negotiations? It is not negotiations, but death for the death of the martyr that the scoundrel needs,” she said, flaring her nostrils and swinging round on the divan, then smiling.
“How very bloodthirsty you are, ma chère! Not everything in politics is done as it is in the drawing room. There are precautionary measures to be taken,” Prince Vasily said with his melancholy smile which, though unnatural, had made itself so much at home on the prince’s old face after thirty years of constant repetition that its unnaturalness seemed quite normal. “Are there any letters from your family?” he added, evidently considering this lady-in-waiting unworthy of serious political conversation and attempting to lead her on to a different subject.
“But where have all these precautionary measures led us?” Anna Pavlovna persisted, refusing to give way.
“If nothing else, to discovering the opinion of that Austria of which you are so fond,” said Prince Vasily, clearly teasing Anna Pavlovna and not wishing to allow the tone of the conversation to move beyond the facetious.
But Anna Pavlovna had become heated.
“Oh, don’t you talk to me about Austria! Perhaps I don’t understand anything, but Austria does not want war and never has wanted it. She is betraying us. Russia alone must be the saviour of Europe. Our benefactor is aware of his high calling and he will be faithful to it. That is the one thing in which I believe. Our kind and wonderful sovereign is destined for the very greatest of roles in this world, and he is so virtuous and good, that God will not abandon him, and he will fulfil his calling to crush the hydra of revolution, which is more horrible than ever in the person of this assassin and villain. We alone must redeem the blood of the martyr. In whom can we place our hope, I ask you? England, with her commercial spirit, will not and cannot understand the lofty soul of Emperor Alexander. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wishes to see, she seeks an ulterior motive in our actions. What did they say to Novosiltsev? Nothing. They did not understand, they cannot understand the selflessness of our Emperor, who wants nothing for himself but wishes everything possible for the good of the world. And what have they promised? Nothing. And even what they have promised will never be done! Prussia has already declared that Buonaparte is invincible and all of Europe is powerless against him … And I don’t believe a single word that Hardenberg or Haugwitz say … This vaunted Prussian neutrality is no more than a trap. I believe only in God and the exalted destiny of our dear Emperor. He will save Europe!” She stopped abruptly, with a mocking smile at her own vehemence.
“I think,” the prince said with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzengerode, you would have taken the Prussian king’s assent by storm. You are so eloquent. Are you going to give me tea?”
“In a moment. A propos,” she said, composing herself once again, “I have a most interesting person coming today, the Vicomte de Mortemart, he is related to the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best families of France. He is one of the good émigrés, the real ones.
He behaved very well and has lost everything. He was with the Duc d’Enghien, with the hapless holy martyr while he was visiting Etenheim. They say he is quite a darling. Your charming son Hippolyte has promised to bring him here. All our ladies are quite beside themselves over him,” she added with a smile of disdain, as though she were sorry for the poor ladies who could think of nothing better to do than fall in love with the Vicomte de Mortemart.
“Apart from yourself, naturally,” said the prince in his gently mocking tone. “I have seen him in society, this vicomte,” he added, evidently little interested by the prospect of seeing Mortemart. “Tell me,” he said in a deliberately careless fashion, as if he had just remembered something, even though his enquiry was in fact the main purpose of his visit, “is it true that the Dowager Empress desires the appointment of Baron Funke as First Secretary in Vienna? It would appear that this baron is something of a nonentity.”
Prince Vasily wished to have his own son appointed to this position, which others were attempting to obtain for the baron through the Empress Maria Fedorovna.
Anna Pavlovna hooded her eyes almost completely in order to indicate that neither she, nor anyone else, could judge what was desirable or pleasing to the Empress.
“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,” was all that she said, in a tone that was particularly aloof and melancholy. The moment Anna Pavlovna mentioned the Empress’s name, her face suddenly presented an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect, combined with the sadness that she felt every time she mentioned her exalted patroness in conversation. She said Her Highness had been pleased to show great regard for Baron Funke, and once again her gaze was veiled with melancholy.
The prince lapsed into indifferent silence. Anna Pavlovna, with her characteristic courtly and feminine adroitness and prompt tact, felt a desire at once to tweak the prince’s nose for having ventured to speak in such a way about a person recommended to the Empress, and at the same time to console him.
“By the way, à propos your family,” she said, “did you know that your daughter is the delight of all society? They think her quite as lovely as the day. The Empress very often asks after her: ‘Where is my Belle Hélène?’”
The prince bowed in token of his respect and gratitude.
“I often think,” Anna Pavlovna continued after a moment’s silence, moving closer to the prince and smiling at him affectionately, as though indicating in this way that the conversation on politics and society was at an end, and the heart-to-heart talk was about to begin, “I often think how unfairly happiness is sometimes distributed in life. What have you done for fate to have given you two such marvellous children – excluding Anatole, your youngest, him I do not like,” she interjected categorically, raising her eyebrows. “Such charming children. And really, you appreciate them far less than anyone else, and therefore you do not deserve them.”
And she smiled her rapturous smile.
“Que voulez-vous? Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity,” said the prince listlessly.
“Stop your joking. I wanted to have a serious talk with you. You know, I am displeased with your younger son. I don’t know him at all, but he appears to have set himself out to earn a scandalous reputation. Just between ourselves” (her face assumed a melancholy expression) “he was spoken of at Her Majesty’s, and people feel sorry for you …”
The prince did not reply, but she gazed meaningfully at him in silence as she waited for a reply. Prince Vasily frowned.
“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I have done everything that a father can for their education, and both of them have turned out fools. Hippolyte at least is a docile fool, but Anatole is a rowdy one. That is the only difference,” he said, smiling more unnaturally and animatedly than usual, and in so doing revealing with unusual distinctness something coarse and disagreeable in the folds that formed around his mouth, making Anna Pavlovna think it could not be very pleasant to be the son or daughter of such a father.
“And why do men like you have children? If you were not a father, there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pavlovna, raising her eyes thoughtfully.
“I am your devoted slave, and I can confess this only to you. My children are the bane of my existence. They are my cross. That is how I explain things to myself. What would you have me do?…” He fell silent, as a gesture of submission to a cruel fate. “Ah yes, if only one could choose to have them or not at will … I am certain that in our time such an invention will be made.”
Anna Pavlovna did not much like the idea of such an invention.
“You have never thought of marrying off your prodigal son Anatole. They do say that old maids have a mania for marrying people off. I am not yet aware of this weakness in myself, but I do have one little person who is very unhappy with her father, a kinswoman of ours, the Princess Bolkonskaya.”
Prince Vasily did not reply, although with the quickness of wit and memory natural to people of high society he indicated with a movement of his head that he had taken note of this information.
“Indeed, d’you know that this Anatole costs me forty thousand a year,” he said, evidently incapable of curbing his gloomy train of thought. He was silent for a moment.
“What will happen in five years’ time, if things carry on like this? Such are the rewards of being a father. Is she rich, your princess?”
“Her father is very rich and mean. He lives in the country. You know, the famous Prince Bolkonsky, retired from service under the deceased Emperor and nicknamed the King of Prussia. He’s a very intelligent man, but an eccentric and a difficult character. The poor girl is so unhappy. She has a brother, he’s the one who recently married Lise Meinen, and is now Kutuzov’s adjutant, he lives here and will be coming this evening. She is the only daughter.”
“Listen, ma chère Annette,” said the prince, suddenly catching hold of the other person’s hand and for some reason tugging it downwards. “Arrange this business for me and I shall be your most devoted slave for ever. She comes from a good family and is rich. That is all I require.”
And with those free and familiar, graceful movements that were so characteristic of him, he raised the lady-in-waiting’s hand and kissed it, and having kissed it he waved the hand through the air as he sprawled back in his armchair, gazing away to the side.
“Attendez,” said Anna Pavlovna, pondering. “I will have a word today with Lise, young Bolkonsky’s wife. And maybe it will all be settled. I shall begin to study my trade as an old maid with your family.”
II
Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room began filling up little by little. The highest nobility of St. Petersburg arrived, people who differed greatly in age and character, but were alike in terms of the society in which they all lived: the diplomat Count Z. arrived, covered in stars and decorations from all the foreign courts, then came the Princess L., a fading beauty, the wife of an envoy; a decrepit general entered, clattering his sabre and wheezing; then Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, entered, having called to collect her father in order to go on with him to the ambassador’s festivities. She was wearing a ball gown and her insigne as a lady-in-waiting. The young little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as the most enchanting woman in St. Petersburg, also arrived; she had married the previous winter and now no longer appeared at great society events on account of being pregnant, but she still went out to small soirées.
“You have not yet met …” or “I don’t think you know my aunt …” said Anna Pavlovna to each of her guests as they arrived, leading them across with great seriousness to a little old woman with tall bows on her cap who had come gliding out of the next room as soon as the guests had begun to arrive; she introduced each by name, slowly shifting her gaze from guest to aunt, before moving aside. All of the guests performed the ritual of greeting this aunt who was known to no one, in whom no one was interested and whom no one wanted to meet. Anna Pavlovna followed their greetings with sad, solemn concern, tacitly giving approval. In speaking to each of them the aunt used the same expressions, whether they concerned the guest’s health, her own health or the health of Her Majesty, which today, thank God, was improved. Concealing their haste out of a sense of decorum, all who approached the old woman left with a feeling of relief at an onerous duty fulfilled, never to approach her again for the entire evening. Of the ten or so gentlemen and ladies already present, some were gathered by the tea table, some were in the nook behind the trellis, and some by the window: all of them made conversation and moved freely about from one group to another.
The young Princess Bolkonskaya arrived with her needlework in a velvet bag embroidered in gold. Her pretty little upper lip with its faint hint of a dark moustache was too short to cover her teeth, but it opened all the more sweetly for that and occasionally stretched down more sweetly still to touch her lower lip. As is always the case with thoroughly attractive women, her fault – the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth – seemed to be her special, very own beauty. Everyone was gladdened by the sight of this pretty mother-to-be so full of health and vitality, who bore her condition so lightly. Just looking at her, being with her and talking for a while made old men as well as bored, sullen young men feel as though they themselves were growing like her. Anyone who spoke with her and saw the radiant smile that accompanied her every word and the brilliant white teeth that were constantly visible, thought he was especially charming that day. Every one of them thought so. Waddling with short, quick steps, the little princess moved round the table with her needlework bag hanging from her arm and, adjusting her dress, sat herself down happily on the divan beside the silver samovar, as though whatever she did was amusing to herself and to everyone around her.
“I’ve brought along my work,” she said, opening the top of her reticule and addressing everybody at once.
“Now, Annette, don’t you play any nasty tricks on me,” she said, addressing the hostess. “You wrote that you were only having a little soirée, and see how poorly dressed I am.” And she spread out her arms to show off her elegant grey gown trimmed with lace and girdled with a broad ribbon under the bosom.
“Don’t you worry, Lise, you will always be the loveliest of all,” replied Anna Pavlovna.
“You know, my husband is abandoning me, he’s going off to get himself killed,” she continued in the same tone, addressing the general. “Tell me, whatever is the point of this loathsome war?” she asked, turning to Prince Vasily and, without waiting for a reply, turned to Prince Vasily’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène: “You know, Hélène, you are becoming too lovely, just too lovely.”
“What a delightful creature this little princess is!” Prince Vasily said quietly to Anna Pavlovna.
“Your charming son Hippolyte is madly in love with her.”
“The fool has taste.”
Shortly after the little princess entered, a stout young man with short-cropped hair came in, wearing spectacles, light-coloured knee-breeches after the fashion of the time, a high ruffle and brown tailcoat. Despite the fashionable cut of his clothes, this fat young man was clumsy and awkward, in the way that healthy peasant lads are clumsy and awkward. But he was unembarrassed and resolute in his movements. He halted for a moment in the centre of the drawing room and, failing to locate the hostess, bowed to everyone except her, despite the signs she was making to him. Taking the old aunt for Anna Pavlovna herself, he sat down beside her and began speaking, but finally realising from the aunt’s astonished face that this was not the right thing to do, he stood up and said:
THE LITTLE PRINCESS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_b53453fd-4238-5cc4-bccc-6e68205fc837)
“I beg your pardon, mademoiselle, I thought you weren’t you.”
Even the impassive aunt blushed at these senseless words and waved with a despairing expression to her niece, beckoning for help. Anna Pavlovna left the other guest with whom she was occupied and came across.
“It’s so very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come to visit a poor invalid,” she said to him, smiling and exchanging glances with her aunt.
Pierre then did something even worse. He sat down beside Anna Pavlovna with the expression of a man who intended to stay for some time and immediately started talking about Rousseau, of whom they had spoken at their last meeting but one. Anna Pavlovna had no time for this. She was busy listening, watching, arranging and rearranging her guests.
“I cannot understand why,” said the young man, peering significantly at his interlocutress over the top of his spectacles, “everyone so dislikes The Confessions, when the Nouvelle Héloïse is far more inferior.”
The fat young man expressed his meaning awkwardly, challenging Anna Pavlovna to an argument and completely failing to notice that the lady-in-waiting had absolutely no interest whatever in which work was good or bad, especially now, when she had so many other things to think of and remember.
PIERRE BEZUKHOV Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_4021ba93-ccc0-51b2-a13a-d115ead66826)
“‘May the last trumpet sound when it will, I shall appear with this book in my hand,’” he said, smiling as he quoted the first page of The Confessions. “No, madame, if you read the book, you will love the man.”
“Yes, of course,” replied Anna Pavlovna, in spite of holding entirely the opposite opinion, and she surveyed her guests, wishing to get to her feet. But Pierre continued:
“It’s not just a book, it’s an entire work. The Confessions is a total confession. Is that not so?”
“But I have no desire to be his confessor, Monsieur Pierre, his sins are too vile,” she said, rising to her feet with a smile. “Come along, I shall introduce you to my cousin.”
And having rid herself of this young man who did not know how to behave, she returned to her concerns as mistress of the house and continued listening and watching, ready to offer assistance whenever conversation flagged, like the foreman of a spinning mill who, with his workers all at their places, keeps pacing about, watching that the spindles all keep turning. And just as the foreman of the spinning mill, on noticing that a spindle has stopped or is squeaking strangely or loudly, hurries across and adjusts it or sets it moving as it should, so Anna Pavlovna approached a circle that had fallen quiet or was talking too much and, with a single word or slight rearrangement, set her regular, decorous conversational engine in motion once again.
III
Anna Pavlovna’s soirée was in full swing. On various sides the spindles were humming away smoothly and steadily. Apart from the aunt, beside whom there sat only a single elderly lady with a thin, tearful face, somewhat out of place in this brilliant company, and the fat Monsieur Pierre who, following his tactless conversations with the aunt and Anna Pavlovna, had remained silent for the entire evening and, evidently being acquainted with hardly anyone there, merely gazed around with lively interest at those who were walking about and talking more loudly than others, the remaining company had divided into three circles. At the centre of one was the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vasily’s daughter, in the second it was Anna Pavlovna herself, in the third it was the little Princess Bolkonskaya – pretty, rosy-cheeked and very pregnant for her young age.
Prince Vasily’s son Hippolyte – “your charming son Hippolyte” as Anna Pavlovna invariably called him – made his entrance, as did the expected vicomte, over whom, according to Anna Pavlovna, “all our ladies” were quite beside themselves. Hippolyte came in peering through a lorgnette, and without lowering this lorgnette, drawled loudly but indistinctly, “the Vicomte de Mortemart” and immediately, paying no attention to his father, seated himself beside the little princess and, inclining his head so close that very little space remained between his face and hers, he began to tell her something obscure and private, laughing.
The vicomte was an attractive-looking young man, with mild features and manners who evidently considered himself a celebrity but, being well brought up, modestly permitted the company in which he found himself to take advantage of his person. Anna Pavlovna was obviously offering him to her guests as a treat. Just as a good maître d’hôtel presents as a supreme delicacy that piece of beef which no one would wish to eat if they had seen it in the filthy kitchen, so this evening Anna Pavlovna served up the vicomte to her guests as something supremely refined, although the gentlemen who were staying at the same hotel and played billiards with him every day saw him as little more than a master of cannon shots, and did not feel in the least bit fortunate to have met the vicomte and spoken with him.
Talk immediately turned to the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said the duke had been killed by his own magnanimity and that there were particular reasons for Bonaparte’s animosity.
“Ah! Do tell us about that, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna.
The vicomte bowed slightly as a token of acquiescence and smiled courteously. Anna Pavlovna walked round the vicomte and invited everyone to listen to his story.
“The vicomte was personally acquainted with the duke,” Anna Pavlovna whispered to one person.
“The vicomte is a marvellous raconteur,” she declared to another.
“So obviously a man of good society,” she said to a third, and thus the vicomte was served up to the company in a tasteful manner in the best possible light, like roast beef on a hot dish garnished with fresh green herbs.
The vicomte, about to begin his story, gave a delicate smile.
“Move over here, chère Hélène,” said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful princess, who was sitting a little distance away, at the centre of a different circle.
Princess Hélène was smiling. She stood up, wearing that same constant smile of a perfectly beautiful woman with which she had entered the drawing room. With a slight rustle of her white ball gown trimmed with its plush and fur, and a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair and diamonds, she stepped between the men who had made way for her and, looking at none of them, but smiling at all as though obligingly granting each one the right to admire the beauty of her figure and well-formed shoulders and her bosom and her back that were greatly exposed in the fashion of the day, and seeming to bring with her all the splendour of a ball, she went over to Anna Pavlovna. Hélène was so lovely that not only was there not a shade of coquetry to be seen in her, but she seemed, on the contrary, to be ashamed of the all-too-overwhelming power of her undeniable beauty. It was as though she wished to diminish her beauty and could not. “What a beautiful woman!” said all who saw her.
As though overcome by something quite extraordinary, the vicomte shrugged his shoulders and lowered his eyes as she seated herself before him and illuminated him with that same unvarying smile.
“Madame, truly I fear for my abilities before such an audience,” he said, bowing his head and smiling.
The princess, finding it needless to respond, rested the elbow of her shapely, exposed arm on the table. She waited, smiling. Throughout the whole story she sat up straight, glancing occasionally either at her beautiful, well-fleshed arm, the shape of which had changed in pressing against the table, or at her even more beautiful bosom, on which she adjusted her diamond necklace; several times she rearranged the folds of her gown and every time that she was impressed by something in the story, she glanced round at Anna Pavlovna and immediately assumed the very same expression that the lady-in-waiting’s face wore, then settled once again into her radiant smile. Following Hélène, the little princess had also come over from the tea table.
“Attendez-moi, I’ll get my needlework,” she said. “Now, what ever are you thinking of?” she asked, addressing Prince Hippolyte. “Fetch me my ridicule.”
The little princess, smiling and chatting on all sides, promptly made everyone shuffle about as she took her place, and then cheerfully sat rearranging herself.
“Now I’m all right,” she said and, requesting them to begin, she took up her work. Prince Hippolyte, after bringing her work-bag, had gone round behind her and, drawing up an armchair, sat close beside her.
The charming Hippolyte was striking for his uncommon resemblance to his beautiful sister, but even more for the fact that, despite the resemblance, he was amazingly ugly. The features of his face were precisely the same as those of his sister, but in her case everything was constantly illuminated by a buoyant, self-sufficient, youthfully vital smile and an exceptional, classical beauty of body, while in the brother’s case, on the contrary, the same face was clouded by idiocy and invariably expressed a self-opinionated peevishness, while the body was puny and weak. The eyes, nose and mouth – all seemed to be clenched into a single indeterminate, dull grimace, and the hands and legs always assumed unnatural positions.
“It isn’t a ghost story, is it?” he asked, having seated himself beside the princess and hastily set his lorgnette to his eyes, as though he could not speak without this instrument.
“Most decidedly not, my dear fellow,” said the astonished storyteller, with a shrug of his shoulders.
“The thing is, I absolutely detest ghost stories,” he said in a tone that made it clear that he uttered words first and only realised what they meant afterwards.
Because he spoke with such self-confidence, no one could tell whether what he had said was very clever or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green frock coat and knee-breeches in the flesh-pink shade that he called cuisse de nymphe éffrayée, with stockings and shoes. He had seated himself as far back as possible in the armchair, facing the raconteur, and placed one hand, with one plain and one engraved signet ring, upon the table in front of him in such an outstretched pose that it clearly cost him a great deal of effort to maintain it at that distance, and yet he held it there throughout the story. In the palm of his other hand he clasped his lorgnette, teasing up with that same hand the curly “titus” coiffure that lent his elongated face an even odder expression and, as though he had just remembered something, he began looking first at his hand with the rings, extended in display, then at the vicomte’s feet, and then he twisted himself entirely around with a rapid, lurching movement, the way he did everything, and stared long and hard at the Princess Bolkonskaya.
HIPPOLYTE KURAGIN Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_6c08dc01-0fba-5c30-af6e-3df42332061b)
“When I had the good fortune to see the late lamented Duc d’Enghien for the last time,” the vicomte began in a tone of mournful elegance, surveying his listeners, “he spoke in the most flattering terms of the beauty and genius of the great Mademoiselle Georges. Who does not know this brilliant and charming woman? I expressed my surprise as to how the duke could have come to know her, not having been in Paris in recent years. The duke smiled and told me that Paris is not as far from Mannheim as it might seem. I was horrified and informed his highness of my terror at the thought of his visiting Paris. ‘Sir,’ I said, ‘God only knows whether even here we are not surrounded by turncoats and traitors and whether your presence in Paris, no matter how secret it may be, is not known to Buonaparte!’ But the duke only smiled at my words with the chivalry and courage which constitute the distinguishing trait of his line.”
“The house of Condé is a branch of laurel grafted on to the tree of the Bourbons, as Pitt recently said,” Prince Vasily pronounced in a monotone, as though he were dictating to some invisible clerk.
“Monsieur Pitt put it very well,” his son Hippolyte added laconically, twisting abruptly on his armchair, his trunk in one direction and his legs in the other, after hastily snatching up his lorgnette and directing his sights at his parent.
“In short,” continued the vicomte, addressing himself primarily to the beautiful Princess Hélène, who kept her gaze fixed on him, “I had to leave Etenheim and only later learned that the duke, in the impetuosity of his valour, had travelled to Paris and paid Mademoiselle Georges the honour not only of admiring her, but also of visiting her.”
“But he had an attachment of the heart for the Princess Charlotte de Rohan Rochefort,” Anna Pavlovna interrupted passionately. “They said that he was secretly married to her,” she added, evidently frightened by the imminent content of this tale, which seemed to her too free in the presence of a young girl.
“One attachment is no hindrance to another,” the vicomte continued, smiling subtly and failing to perceive Anna Pavlovna’s apprehension. “But the point is that prior to her intimacy with the duke, Mademoiselle Georges had enjoyed intimate relations with another person.”
He paused.
“That person was called Buonaparte,” he announced, glancing round at his listeners with a smile. Anna Pavlovna, in her turn, glanced around uneasily, seeing the tale becoming ever more dangerous.
“And so,” the vicomte continued, “the new sultan from the Thousand and One Nights did not scorn to spend frequent evenings at the home of the most beautiful, most agreeable woman in France. And Mademoiselle Georges” – he paused, with an expressive shrug of his shoulders – “was obliged to make a virtue of necessity. The fortunate Buonaparte would usually arrive in the evening, without appointing the days in advance.”
“Ah! I see what is coming, and it fills me with horror,” said the pretty little Princess Bolkonskaya with a shudder of her lissom, shapely shoulders.
The elderly lady, who had been sitting beside the aunt the whole evening, came to join the raconteur’s circle and shook her head with an emphatic, sad smile.
“It is terrible, is it not?” she said, although she had obviously not even heard the beginning of the story. No one paid any attention to the inappropriateness of her remark, nor indeed to her.
Prince Hippolyte promptly declared in a loud voice:
“Georges in the role of Clytemnestra, how marvellous!”
Anna Pavlovna remained silent and anxious, still not having finally made up her mind whether the tale that the vicomte was telling was proper or improper. On the one hand, it involved evening visits to actresses, on the other hand, if the Vicomte de Mortemart himself, a relative of the Montmorencys through the Rohans, the finest representative of the St. Germain district, was going to make unseemly talk in the drawing room, then who, after all, knew what was proper or improper?
“One evening,” the vicomte continued, surveying his listeners and becoming more animated, “this Clytemnestra, having enchanted the entire theatre with her astonishing interpretation of Racine, returned home and thought she would rest to recover from her fatigue and excitement. She was not expecting the sultan.”
Anna Pavlovna shuddered at the word “sultan”. Princess Hélène lowered her eyes and stopped smiling.
“Then suddenly the maidservant announced that the former Vicomte Rocroi wished to see the great actress. Rocroi was the name that the duke used for himself. He was received,” the vicomte added, and after pausing for a few seconds in order to make it clear that he was not telling all that he knew, he continued: “The table gleamed with crystal, enamel, silver and porcelain. Two places were set, the time flew by imperceptibly, and the delight …”
Unexpectedly at this point in the narrative Prince Hippolyte emitted a peculiar, loud sound, which some took for a cough, others for snuffling, mumbling or laughing, and he began hastily fumbling after the lorgnette which he had dropped. The narrator stopped in astonishment. The alarmed Anna Pavlovna interrupted the description of the delights which the vicomte was depicting with such relish.
“Do not keep us in suspense, vicomte,” she said.
The vicomte smiled.
“Delight reduced hours to minutes, when suddenly there came a ring at the door and the startled maid, trembling, came running in to announce that a terrible Bonapartist Mameluke was ringing and that his appalling master was already standing at the entrance …”
“Charmant, délicieux,” whispered the little Princess Bolkonskaya, jabbing her needle into her embroidery as if to indicate that the fascination and charm of the story had prevented her from continuing her work.
The vicomte acknowledged this mute praise with a grateful smile and was about to continue when a new person entered the drawing room and effected the very pause that was required.
IV
This new person was the young Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, husband of the little princess. It was clear, not so much from the way the young prince had arrived late and was yet received in the most polite fashion by the hostess, as from the way that he made his entrance, that he was one of those young people who are so pampered by society that they have come to despise it. The young prince, a slightly short but slim man, was extremely handsome, with dark hair and a brownish complexion and a somewhat languorous air; he was dressed with exceptional elegance and had tiny hands and feet. Everything about his appearance, from his bored and weary gaze to his measured saunter, made the sharpest possible contrast to his lively little wife. He was evidently not only acquainted with everyone present in the drawing room, but so sick of them all that he found it utterly tedious even to look at or listen to them, since he knew in advance exactly how everything would go. Of all the people there that he found so very boring, he seemed to find none more so than his own pretty wife. He turned away from her lovely face with a faint, sour grimace that spoiled his handsome features, as if he were thinking: “You were the last thing this company required to make it utterly loathsome to me.”
He kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand with an expression that suggested he would have given God only knew what to be spared this onerous duty and, squinting his eyes till they were almost closed, he surveyed the assembled company.
“You have a large gathering,” he said in a high, thin voice, nodding to one person while proffering his hand to another, holding it out to be shaken.
“You intend to go to the war, prince?” said Anna Pavlovna.
“General Kutuzóv,” he said, stressing the final syllable, zóff, like a Frenchman, and removing a glove from a perfectly white, tiny hand with which he rubbed his eye, “General-in-Chief Kutuzóv has asked me to be his adjutant.”
“But what about Lise, your wife?”
“She will go to the country.”
“And are you not ashamed to deprive us of your delightful wife?”
The young adjutant puffed out his lips to make a derisive sound of the kind that only the French make, but said nothing.
“André,” said his wife, addressing her husband in the same flirtatious tone in which she addressed strangers, “do come here and sit down and listen to the story the vicomte is telling us about Mademoiselle Georges and Buonaparte.”
Andrei narrowed his eyes and sat down as far away as possible, as though he had not heard his wife.
“Pray continue, vicomte,” said Anna Pavlovna. “The vicomte was telling us how the Duc d’Enghien visited Mademoiselle Georges,” she added, addressing the new arrival, so that he could follow the continuation of the story.
“The purported rivalry between Buonaparte and the duke over Mademoiselle Georges,” said Prince Andrei in a tone suggesting it was absurd for anyone not to know about that, and he slumped against the armrest of his chair. At this point the young man in spectacles named Monsieur Pierre, who had not taken his delighted, affectionate gaze off Prince Andrei from the moment he entered the drawing room, approached him and grasped him by the arm. Prince Andrei was so incurious that, without even glancing round, he twisted his face into a grimace that expressed annoyance with whoever was touching his epaulette, but on seeing Pierre’s smiling face, Prince Andrei also broke into a smile, and suddenly his entire face was transformed by the kind and intelligent expression that suffused it.
“What’s this? You here, my dear Horse Guard?” the prince asked with delight, but also with a slightly patronising and supercilious inflection.
“I knew that you would be,” replied Pierre. “I’ll come to you for supper,” he added quietly, in order not to disturb the vicomte, who was continuing with his story. “May I?”
“No, you may not,” said Prince Andrei, laughing and turning away, but letting Pierre know with a gentle squeeze of his hand that he need not have asked.
The vicomte was telling them that Mademoiselle Georges had implored the duke to hide, that the duke had said he had never hidden from anyone, and that Mademoiselle Georges had said to him, “Your highness, your sword belongs to the King and to France” and that the duke had after all hidden himself under the laundry in the next room, and that when Napoleon had become unwell, the duke had emerged from under the laundry and seen Buonaparte there before him.
“Charming, quite exquisite!” said a voice among the listeners.
Even Anna Pavlovna, having observed that the most difficult part of the tale had been negotiated successfully, calmed down and was quite able to enjoy the story. The vicomte warmed to his task and, rolling his r’s powerfully, declaimed with the animation of an actor …
“The enemy of his house, the usurper of the throne, the man who stood at the head of his nation, was here, before him, prostrate and motionless on the ground and perhaps at his last gasp. As the great Corneille said: ‘Malicious glee surged in his breast and outraged majesty alone helped him repel it.’”
The vicomte stopped and, as he prepared to proceed with his story with still greater verve, he smiled, as though reassuring the ladies, who were already over-excited. Quite without warning during this pause, the beautiful Princess Hélène looked at her watch, exchanged glances with her father, and the two of them suddenly stood up, their movements disturbing the circle and interrupting the story.
“We shall be late, papa,” she said simply, all the while beaming her smile at everyone.
“Do forgive me, my dear vicomte,” said Prince Vasily to the Frenchman, affectionately tugging him down by the sleeve to prevent him rising from his seat. “These wretched festivities of the ambassador’s deprive me of my pleasure and interrupt you.”
“So awfully sorry to forsake your exquisite soirée,” he said to Anna Pavlovna.
His daughter, Princess Hélène, began making her way between the chairs, gently restraining the folds of her gown, with the smile on her lovely face beaming ever more radiantly.
V
Anna Pavlovna requested the vicomte to wait while she showed Prince Vasily and his daughter out through the next room. The elderly lady who had previously been sitting with the aunt and had then so foolishly expressed her interest in the vicomte’s story, hastily rose to her feet and followed Prince Vasily to the entrance hall.
The former pretence of interest had completely vanished from her face. That kind, tearful face now expressed only anxiety and fear.
“What can you tell me, prince, about my Boris?” she said, as she caught up with him in the hallway (she pronounced the name Boris with a distinctive stress on the “o”). “I cannot stay here in St. Petersburg any longer. Tell me, what news can I bring my poor boy?”
Although Prince Vasily listened to the elderly lady unwillingly, almost impolitely, and even showed his impatience, she smiled at him affectionately and imploringly, and to prevent him leaving took him by the arm.
“What trouble would it be for you to have a word with His Majesty, and he would be directly transferred to the Guards,” she pleaded.
“Believe me, I will do all that I can, princess,” replied Prince Vasily, “but it is difficult for me to ask His Majesty; I would advise you to appeal to Razumovsky through Prince Golitsyn, that would be wiser.”
The elderly lady bore the name of Drubetskaya, one of the finest family names in Russia, but she was poor and, having long since withdrawn from society, she had forfeited her former connections. She had come here now solely to obtain an appointment to the Guards for her only son. It was only in order to see Prince Vasily that she had had herself invited to Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, and it was only for that reason that she had sat listening to the vicomte’s story. She was alarmed at Prince Vasily’s words; her once-beautiful face expressed, for a moment, something close to disdain. She smiled again and clutched Prince Vasily’s arm more tightly.
“Listen, prince,” she said, “I have never once petitioned you for anything and I never will, and I have never once reminded you of my father’s friendship towards you. But now I entreat you in God’s name, do this for my son and I shall regard you as my benefactor,” she added hastily. “No, do not be angry, but promise me. I have asked Golitsyn and he refused. Be the same good fellow you always were,” she said, trying to smile, despite the tears in her eyes.
“Papa, we shall be late,” said Princess Hélène, turning her beautiful head on her classical shoulders as she waited by the door.
Influence in society is capital which, if it is not to diminish, must be protected. Prince Vasily knew this and, realising that if he began asking for everyone who begged him, he would soon be unable to ask for anyone at all, he rarely made use of his influence. In Princess Drubetskaya’s case, however, her renewed appeal prompted something akin to a pang of conscience. She had reminded him of the truth: that he had been obliged to her father for the first steps in his own career. In addition, he could see from her manner that she was one of those women, especially mothers, who, once they have taken an idea into their heads, will never relent until their wishes have been granted, otherwise they are prepared to carry on badgering every day and every minute and even create scenes. It was this final consideration that swayed him.
“My dear Anna Mikhailovna,” he said with the customary familiarity and boredom in his voice, “for me it is almost impossible to do what you wish, but in order to prove to you that I love you and honour the memory of the late count, your father, I shall do the impossible. Your son shall be transferred to the Guards, here is my hand on it. Are you content?”
And he shook her hand, tugging it downwards.
“My dear man, you are my benefactor! I expected nothing less from you,” the mother lied and demeaned herself, “I knew how kind you are.”
He was about to leave.
“Wait, just one more word. Since he will move to the Guards …” she said and stopped short. “You are on good terms with Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov, recommend Boris to him as an adjutant. Then my mind would be at rest, and then …”
Anna Mikhailovna begged, like a gypsy, for her son: the more she was given, the more she wanted. Prince Vasily smiled.
“That I do not promise. You have no idea how Kutuzov has been besieged since he was appointed commander-in-chief. He told me himself that all the ladies of Moscow have conspired to give him their children as adjutants.”
“No, promise me, I shan’t let you go, my dear man, my benefactor …”
“Papa,” the beauty repeated in the same tone as before, “we shall be late.”
“Well, au revoir. You see?”
“Then tomorrow you will put it to His Majesty.”
“Without fail, but concerning Kutuzov I do not promise.”
“No, promise me, promise, Vasily,” Anna Mikhkailovna said as he left, with the smile of a young coquette which once must have been natural to her, but now was quite out of place on her kind, careworn face. She had clearly forgotten her age and sought out of habit to employ all the ancient feminine wiles. But as soon as he went out her face once again assumed the cold, artifical expression it had worn previously. She returned to the circle in which the vicomte was continuing with his story and once again pretended to be listening, waiting until it was time to leave, since her business was already done.
VI
The end of the vicomte’s story went as follows:
“The Duc d’Enghien took out of his pocket a vial of rock crystal mounted in gold which contained the elixir of life given to his father by the Comte St. Germain. This elixir, as is well known, possessed the property of bringing the dead, or the almost dead, back to life, but it was not to be given to anyone but members of the house of Condé. Outsiders who tasted the elixir were cured in the same way as the Condés, but they became implacable enemies of the ducal house. A proof of this can be seen in the fact that the duke’s father, wishing to restore his dying horse, gave it these drops. The horse revived, but several times afterwards it attempted to kill its rider and once during a battle it carried him into the republicans’ camp. The duke’s father killed his beloved horse. In spite of this, the young and chivalrous Duc d’Enghien poured several drops into the mouth of his enemy Buonaparte, and the ogre revived.”
“‘Who are you?’ asked Buonaparte.
“‘A relative of the maid,’ replied the duke.
“‘Lies!’ cried Buonaparte.
“‘General, I am unarmed,’ replied the duke.
“‘Your name?’
“‘I have saved your life,’ replied the duke.
“The duke left, but the elixir took effect. Buonaparte began to feel hatred for the duke and from that day on he swore to destroy the unfortunate and magnanimous youth. Having learned who his rival was from a handkerchief dropped by the duke, which was embroidered with the crest of the house of Condé, Buonaparte ordered his minions to contrive a conspiracy between Pichegru and Georges as a pretext, then had the heroic martyr seized in the dukedom of Baden and killed.
“The angel and the demon. And that was how the most terrible crime in history was committed.”
With this the vicomte concluded his story and swung round on his chair in an excess of agitation. Everyone was silent.
“The murder of the duke was more than a crime, vicomte,” said Prince Andrei, smiling gently, as though he were making fun of the vicomte, “it was a mistake.”
The vicomte raised his eyebrows and spread his arms wide. His gesture could have signified many things.
“But what do you make of the latest farce, of the coronation in Milan?” asked Anna Pavlovna. “In this new farce, the peoples of Genoa and Lucca declare their wishes to Mr. Buonaparte and Mr. Buonaparte sits on a throne and grants the people’s wishes. Oh, it is exquisite! Why, it’s enough to drive one insane. Just imagine, the entire world has lost its wits.”
Prince Andrei turned away from Anna Pavlovna, as if to imply that the talk was leading nowhere.
“God has given me the crown. Woe betide him who touches it,” Prince Andrei declared proudly, as though they were his own words (they were in fact those of Bonaparte when the crown was set upon his head). “They say he looked awfully fine as he pronounced those words,” he added.
Anna Pavlovna glanced sharply at Prince Andrei.
“I hope,” she continued, “that that was the drop which will finally make the glass run over. The sovereigns can no longer tolerate this man who is such a threat to everything.”
“The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia,” said the vicomte with courteous despair, “but the sovereigns! What did they do for Louis XVI, for the Queen, for Elizabeth? Nothing!” he continued, growing animated. “And believe me, they are now being punished for their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns? They send their ambassadors to greet this usurper of the throne.”
And with a contemptuous sigh he again shifted his position. At these words Prince Hippolyte, who had been looking at the vicomte through his lorgnette the whole time, suddenly turned his entire body towards the little Princess Bolkonskaya and, after asking her for a needle, began to show her, by drawing with the point on the table, the Condé coat of arms. He expounded it to her with an expression as intent as if the princess had asked him to do it.
“The Condé coat of arms consists of a shield with a staff gules engrailed with a staff azure,” he prattled. The princess listened, smiling.
“If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France for another year,” said the vicomte, continuing the chief conversation with the air of a man who is listening to no one, but merely pursuing his own train of thought on a matter which he knows better than everyone else, “then things will be carried too far by all the intrigues, violence, exiles and executions. Society, I mean good society, French society, will be exterminated for ever, and then what?”
He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands.
“The Emperor Alexander,” said Anna Pavlovna with the melancholy that always accompanied her talk of the imperial family, “has declared that he will allow the French themselves to choose their own form of government. And I think there can be no doubt that, once it is liberated from the usurper, the entire nation will throw itself into the arms of the legitimate King,” said Anna Pavlovna, striving to be as gracious as possible with the émigré and royalist.
“Oh, if only that happy moment could come!” said the vicomte, inclining his head in gratitude for this mark of attention.
“And what do you think, Monsieur Pierre?” Anna Pavlovna sweetly asked the fat young man whose awkward silence was irksome to her as a polite hostess. “What do you think? You have recently come from Paris.”
While waiting for a reply, Anna Pavlovna smiled at the vicomte and the others, as if to say: “I must be polite even with him; you see, I still speak to him, even though I know he has nothing to say.”
VII
“The entire nation will die for its Emperor, for the greatest man in the world!” the young man said suddenly in a loud and vehement voice, without any preamble whatsoever, resembling a young peasant lad fearful of being interrupted and deprived of the opportunity to express himself in full. He glanced round at Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei smiled.
“The greatest genius of our age,” Pierre continued.
“What? That is your opinion? You are joking!” screeched Anna Pavlovna, her fright prompted less by the words that the young man uttered than by the animation, so spontaneous and entirely improper, that was expressed in the full, fleshy features of his face, and still more by the sound of his voice, which was too loud and, above all, too natural. He made no gestures and spoke in short bursts, occasionally adjusting his spectacles and glancing around, but it was clear from his whole appearance that no one could stop him now and he would express his entire view, regardless of the proprieties. The young man was like a wild, unbroken horse who, until saddled and stirrupped, is quiet and even timid and in no way different from other horses, but who, as soon as the harness is put on him, suddenly begins for no clear reason to pull in his head, and rear and buck in the most ludicrous manner possible, without knowing why himself. The young man had evidently sensed the bridle and begun his ludicrous bucking.
“Nobody in France even thinks about the Bourbons nowadays,” he continued hastily, so that no one would interrupt him, and constantly glancing round at Prince Andrei, as though he was the only one from whom he expected encouragement. “Do not forget that it is only three months since I returned from France.”
He spoke in excellent French.
“Monsieur le vicomte is absolutely right to suppose that in a year it will be too late for the Bourbons. It is already too late. There are no more royalists. Some have abandoned their fatherland, others have become Bonapartists. The whole of St. Germain pays homage to the Emperor.”
“There are exceptions,” the vicomte said superciliously.
The worldly, experienced Anna Pavlovna looked anxiously by turns at the vicomte and the improper young man and could not forgive herself for imprudently inviting this youth without first getting to know him.
The improper youth was the illegitimate son of a rich and renowned grandee. Anna Pavlovna had invited him out of respect for his father, bearing in mind also that Monsieur Pierre had just returned from abroad, where he had been educated.
“If only I had known that he was so badly brought up and a bonapartist,” she thought, looking at his big, close-cropped head and his large, fleshy features. “So this is the upbringing they give young men nowadays. You can tell a man of good society straight away,” she said to herself, admiring the vicomte’s composure.
“Almost the entire nobility,” Pierre continued, “has gone over to Bonaparte.”
“So say the Bonapartists,” said the vicomte. “It is hard these days to discover the opinion of the French public.”
“As Bonaparte said,” Prince Andrei began, and involuntarily everyone turned in the direction of his voice, which was low and indolent, but always audible because of its self-assurance, waiting to hear exactly what Bonaparte had said.
“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not want it,’” Prince Andrei continued after a brief silence, again repeating the words of Napoleon. “‘I opened up my ante-chambers and the crowds rushed in.’ I do not know how justified he was in saying that, but it was clever, viciously clever,” he concluded with an acid smile and turned away.
“He did have the right to speak out like that against the royalist aristocracy; it no longer exists in France,” Pierre put in, “or if it does, then it carries no weight. And the people? The people adore the great man, and the people have chosen him. The people are without prejudice; they have seen the greatest genius and hero in the world.”
“He might be a hero to some,” said the vicomte, not replying to the young man and not even looking at him, but addressing Anna Pavlovna and Prince Andrei, “but after the murder of the duke there is one more martyr in heaven and one less hero on earth.”
Anna Pavlovna and the others had no time to appreciate the vicomte’s words before the unbroken horse continued his novel and amusing bucking.
“The execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” Pierre continued, “was a state necessity, and I see precisely greatness of soul in the fact that Napoleon was not afraid to take upon himself alone the responsibility for that act.”
“You approve of murder!” Anna Pavlovna exclaimed in a ghastly whisper.
“Monsieur Pierre, how can you see greatness of soul in murder?” said the little princess, smiling and drawing her work closer to her.
“Ah! Oh!” said various voices.
“Magnificent,” Prince Hippolyte suddenly said in English, and began slapping his open hand against his knee. The vicomte merely shrugged.
“Is the murder of the duke a good deed or a bad one?” he said, surprising everyone with his high-toned presence of mind. “One or the other …”
Pierre sensed that this dilemma had been posed for him so that if he replied in the negative, they would force him to repudiate his admiration for his hero, but if he replied in the positive, that the deed was a good one, then God alone knew what might happen to him. He replied in the positive, unafraid of what would happen.
“This deed is a great one, like everything that this great man does,” he said audaciously, paying no attention to the horror expressed on all of their faces except the face of Prince Andrei, or to the contemptuous shrugs; he carried on talking on his own, even though his hostess clearly did not wish it. Everyone exchanged glances of amazement as they listened to him, except Prince Andrei. Prince Andrei listened with sympathy and a quiet smile.
“Surely he knew,” continued Pierre, “what a furious storm the death of the duke would stir up against him? He knew that for this one head he would be obliged once again to wage war against the whole of Europe, that he would fight, and would be victorious again, because …”
“Are you Russian?” asked Anna Pavlovna.
“I am. But he will be victorious, because he is a great man. The death of the duke was necessary. He is a genius and the difference between a genius and ordinary people is that he does not act for himself, but for humanity. The royalists wished to inflame once again the internal war and revolution that he had suppressed. He needed domestic peace, and with the execution of the duke he set an example that made the Bourbons stop their intrigues.”
“But, mon cher Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, attempting to overcome him by meekness, “how can you call the means to the restoration of the legitimate throne intrigues?”
“Only the will of the people is legitimate,” he replied, “and they drove out the Bourbons and handed power to the great Napoleon.”
And he looked triumphantly over the top of his spectacles at his listeners.
“Ah! The Social Contract,” the vicomte said in a quiet voice, evidently reassured at having recognised the source from which his opponent’s views were derived.
“Well, after this …!” exclaimed Anna Pavlovna.
But even after this Pierre continued speaking just as uncivilly.
“No,” he said, growing more and more animated, “the Bourbons and the royalists fled from the revolution, they could not understand it. But this man rose above it, and suppressed its abuses while retaining all that is good – the equality of citizens and freedom of speech and of the press, and only because of this did he acquire power.”
“Indeed, but if, having taken power, he had returned it to the rightful king,” said the vicomte ironically, “then I should call him a great man.”
“He could not have done that. The people gave him power only so that he could rid them of the Bourbons, and because the people saw in him a great man. The revolution itself was a great thing,” continued Monsieur Pierre, demonstrating with this audacious and challenging introductory phrase his great youth and desire to express everything as quickly as possible.
“Revolution and regicide are a great thing! After this …”
“I am not talking of regicide. When Napoleon appeared, the revolution had already run its course, and the nation put itself into his hands of its own accord. But he understood the ideas of the revolution and became its representative.”
“Yes, the ideas of plunder, murder and regicide,” the ironic voice interrupted once again.
“Those were the extremes, of course, but that is not what is most important, what is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, the equality of citizens; and Napoleon retained all of these ideas in full force.”
“Liberty and equality,” the vicomte said derisively, as though he had decided finally to demonstrate seriously to this youth the full stupidity of his words. “All high-sounding words which have been compromised long ago. Who does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour preached liberty and equality. But after the revolution were people any happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte is destroying it.”
Prince Andrei looked with a merry smile by turns at Monsieur Pierre, at the vicomte and at his hostess, and evidently found this unexpected and indecorous episode amusing. During the first minute of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna had been horrified, for all her experience of the world, but when she saw that, despite the sacrilegious sentiments expressed by Pierre, the vicomte did not lose his temper, and when she became convinced that it was no longer possible to suppress what was being said, she gathered her strength and joined forces with the vicomte to assail the orator.
“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “how do you explain a great man who was capable of executing a duke or, in the final analysis, simply a man, without a trial and without any proven guilt?”
“I would like to ask,” said the vicomte, “how Monsieur Pierre explains the Eighteenth Brumaire. Surely this is deceit? It is cheap swindling, in no way resembling the conduct of a great man.”
“And the prisoners whom he killed in Africa?” the little princess interjected at the same point. “That is awful.” And she shrugged her little shoulders.
“He is a scoundrel, no matter what you say,” said Prince Hippolyte.
Monsieur Pierre did not know whom to answer, he glanced round at them all and smiled, and the smile exposed his uneven black teeth. His smile was not the same as other people’s, which merge into the absence of a smile. On the contrary, when his smile came, his serious, even rather sullen face instantly disappeared and a different one replaced it; childish, kind, even a little stupid, and seeming to beg forgiveness.
The vicomte, who was seeing him for the first time, realised that this Jacobin was by no means as terrible as the things that he said. Everyone fell silent.
“Well, do you want him to answer everyone at once?” Prince Andrei’s voice rang out. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one should distinguish between the actions of the individual and those of the general or the emperor. So it seems to me.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” put in Pierre, delighted at the support that had been offered him. “As a man, he is great on the Bridge at Arcole, in the hospital in Jaffa, where he offers his hand to victims of the plague, but …”
Prince Andrei, evidently wishing to mitigate the awkwardness caused by Pierre’s oration, half-rose to his feet, preparing to leave and signalling to his wife.
“It is difficult,” he said, “to judge people of our own time, posterity will judge them.”
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte stood up, halting everybody by gesturing with his hands and requesting them to be seated, and began speaking:
“Today I was told a quite charming Moscow anecdote, I simply must regale you with it. I beg your pardon, vicomte, I shall tell it in Russian, otherwise the whole point of the story will be lost.”
And Prince Hippolyte began speaking in Russian with the same accent with which French people who have spent a year in Russia speak. Everyone paused, so keenly and insistently did Prince Hippolyte demand their attention for his story.
“There is à Moscou a certain lady. And she be very mean. She needed have two footmen behind a carriage. And very tall. That was to her taste. And she had chambermaid who was tall also. She said …”
At this point Prince Hippolyte began pondering, evidently struggling to figure something out.
“She said … yes, she said, ‘Girl, put livery on and go with me to carriage to make visits.’”
Then Prince Hippolyte snorted and began to chortle far sooner than his listeners, which was something of a disadvantage to the narrator. However, many of them, including the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did smile.
“She set off. Suddenly strong wind appeared. Girl lose her hat and long hair tumble down all loose …”
Then he could hold out no longer and burst into fitful laughter, and through this laughter he said:
“And so the whole world find out …”
That was how the anecdote ended. Although it was not clear why he told it or why it absolutely had to be told in Russian, Anna Pavlovna and the others were nonetheless grateful for Prince Hippolyte’s courtesy, which had put such an agreeable end to Monsieur Pierre’s disagreeable and discourteous outburst. Following the anecdote the conversation broke up into petty gossip about the next ball and the last, a play, and when and where people would see each other again.
VIII
Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soirée, the guests began taking their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Fat and broad, with huge hands that seemed to have been made for swinging one-pood weights, he had no idea, as they say, of how to enter a salon and even less idea of how to leave it, that is, of how to make his farewells and say something particularly agreeable before his exit. In addition, he was absent-minded. As he stood up, instead of taking his own hat he grabbed hold of a three-cornered hat with a general’s panache and held it, tugging at the plume, until the general finally requested him with some animosity, or so it seemed to Pierre, to hand it back. But all of his absent-mindedness and his inability to enter a salon and converse appropriately within it were redeemed by an expression so good-natured and open that, despite all his shortcomings, even those whom he had placed in an embarrassing position could not help finding him likeable. Anna Pavlovna turned towards him and, expressing her forgiveness of his outburst with Christian meekness, nodded to him and said:
“I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
To these words he made no response, but merely bowed and once again displayed to everybody his smile that said nothing, except perhaps this: “Opinions are all very well, but see what a fine, good-natured fellow I am.” And everybody, even Anna Pavlovna, could not help but feel it.
“You know, my dear fellow, your way of thinking tends to raise the roof,” said Prince Andrei, buckling on his sabre.
“I don’t mean it to,” said Pierre, lowering his head, peering over his spectacles and coming to a standstill. “How is it possible to see nothing in either the revolution or Napoleon except the personal interests of the Bourbons? We ourselves do not appreciate how much we are indebted precisely to the revolution …”
Prince Andrei did not wait to hear the end of this discourse. He went out into the entrance hall and, presenting his shoulders to the servant, who threw on his cloak, he lent an indifferent ear to the idle chatter of his wife and Prince Hippolyte, who had also come out into the hallway. Prince Hippolyte was standing beside the delightful pregnant princess and staring hard at her through his lorgnette.
“Go in, Annette, you’ll catch cold,” said the little princess, taking her leave of Anna Pavlovna. “It’s settled,” she added quietly.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to talk over with Lise the putative marriage of Anatole and Lise’s sister-in-law and to request the princess to influence her husband.
“I am relying on you, chère amie,” said Anna Pavlovna, also quietly, “you will write to her and let me know how her father views the matter. Au revoir.” And she left the entrance hall.
Prince Hippolyte moved still closer to the little princess and, leaning his face down to hers, began saying something to her in a half-whisper.
Two servants, one the princess’s and the other his, stood waiting for them to finish talking, holding a shawl and a redingote and listening to their French speech, which they could not understand, but with expressions that suggested they did understand and did not wish to show it. The princess as always smiled as she spoke and laughed as she listened.
“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince Hippolyte, “so boring … An excellent soirée. Was it not, excellent?”
“They say the ball will be very fine,” replied the princess, twitching her lip with the faint moustache. “All the beautiful society ladies will be there.”
“Not all, because you will not be there, not all,” said Prince Hippolyte, laughing gleefully and, seizing the shawl from the manservant, even shoving him back, he began arranging it on the princess. Either out of clumsiness or on purpose, no one could have told which, he did not lower his arms for a long time after putting the shawl in place, and appeared to embrace the young woman.
She moved away from him gracefully, still smiling, turned round and looked at her husband. Prince Andrei’s eyes were closed, he looked tired and sleepy.
“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, running his eye over her. Prince Hippolyte hastily donned his redingote, which in the new style hung below his heels, and ran out, tripping over it, onto the porch after the princess, whom a servant was helping into a carriage.
“Princess, au revoir,” he shouted, tripping over his tongue in the same way as over his feet.
Gathering her skirts, the princess prepared to take her seat in the darkness of the carriage; her husband began adjusting his sabre; Prince Hippolyte, on the pretext of being helpful, kept getting in everyone’s way.
“Permit me, sir,” said Prince Andrei in Russian to Prince Hippolyte, who was preventing him from passing.
This “permit me, sir” had a ring of such cold contempt that Prince Hippolyte hastily stepped aside and began apologising and swaying agitatedly from one foot to the other, as though in pain from some fresh wound, still raw and smarting.
“I’m expecting you, Pierre,” said Prince Andrei’s voice.
The postillion set off with the carriage wheels rumbling. Prince Hippolyte laughed fitfully as he stood on the porch, waiting for the vicomte, whom he had promised to drive home …
“Eh bien, mon cher, your little princess is very nice, very nice,” said the vicomte after he and Hippolyte had got into their carriage. “Mais très bien.” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “And perfectly French.” Hippolyte snorted and began laughing. “And you know, you are quite terrible, with your innocent ways,” the vicomte continued. “I pity the poor husband, this poor little officer posturing as some ruling prince.”
Hippolyte snorted again and said through his laughter:
“And you said that Russian ladies were not as good as French. You just need to know how to go about it.”
IX
Reaching the house first, Pierre, as if he lived there, went through into Prince Andrei’s study and immediately, as was his habit, lay on the divan, taking down the first book he came across on the shelf (it was Caesar’s Commentaries) and, leaning on his elbows, set about reading it from the middle with as much interest as if he had been immersed in it for some two hours. As soon as Prince Andrei arrived he went straight through to his dressing room, emerging into the study five minutes later.
PIERRE BEZUKHOV Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_98033372-4287-5dfa-94f2-a6a62c68d2e4)
“What did you do to Madame Scherer? She’ll now fall quite seriously ill,” he said to Pierre in Russian with a protective, cheerful and amicable smile as he came in, now dressed in a heavy velvet smoking jacket, rubbing his small white hands, which he had evidently just washed once again.
Pierre swung his whole body round, making the divan creak, and turned his eager face to Prince Andrei, who was shaking his head.
Pierre nodded guiltily.
“I didn’t wake up until three. Would you believe that we drank eleven bottles between the five of us?” (Pierre always addressed Prince Andrei formally, while the prince spoke to him in a more informal manner. This was a habit they had acquired as children, and it had never changed.) “Such splendid fellows. That Englishman’s a marvel!”
“That’s one pleasure I have never understood,” said Prince Andrei.
“What are you saying? You are a quite different kind of person, remarkable in every way,” Pierre said sincerely.
“At our dear Anatoly Kuragin’s place again?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t think why you associate with that trash!”
“But he really is a fine chap.”
“He’s trash!” Prince Andrei said curtly and frowned. “Hippolyte is a very bright boy, though, isn’t he?” he added.
Pierre laughed, setting his entire body shaking so that the divan began creaking again. “In Moscou there is a certain lady,” he mimicked through his laughter.
“But you know, he really is a good chap,” the prince interceded for Hippolyte. “Well then, have you finally decided on anything? Are you going to be a Horse Guard or a diplomat?”
Pierre sat up on the divan, drawing his legs under him.
“Can you imagine, I still don’t know? I don’t like either choice!”
“But you have to decide on something, don’t you? Your father’s waiting.”
At the age of ten Pierre had been sent abroad with his tutor, an abbot, and had stayed there until he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow, his father had dismissed the abbot and told the young man: “Now go to St. Petersburg, take a look around, get to know people and think about which path to choose. I agree to anything. Here is a letter for you to Prince Vasily, and here is money. Write to me about everything, I will help you with everything.” Pierre had been trying to choose a career for three months now, and he had still got nowhere. This was the choice which Prince Andrei had mentioned to him. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“I understand military service, but explain this to me,” he said. “Why are you – you understand everything – why are you going to this war, against whom, after all? Against Napoleon and France. If it were a war for liberty, I would understand, I would be the first to join the army, but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world … I do not understand how you can go.”
“You must see, mon cher,” Prince Andrei began, perhaps unwittingly wishing to conceal his own vagueness of thought from himself, suddenly beginning to speak in French and changing his former sincere tone for a formal and cold one, “one can take an entirely different point of view on this question.”
And, as though everything he mentioned were his own personal business or that of his intimate acquaintances, he proceeded to expound to Pierre the view then current in the highest circles of St. Petersburg society of the political mission of Russia in Europe at that time.
Since the revolution Europe had been plagued by wars. The cause of the wars, apart from Napoleon’s ambition, stemmed from an imbalance of power in Europe. One great power was needed to take the matter in hand with strict impartiality and, through alliances, to define new state boundaries and establish a new balance of power in Europe together with a new people’s law, by virtue of which war would become impossible and all misunderstandings between states would be settled by mediation. Russia had taken this selfless role upon herself in the forthcoming war. Russia would seek only to return France to its boundaries of 1796, allowing the French themselves to choose their own form of government, and also to restore the independence of Italy, the Cisalpine kingdom, the new state of the two Belgiums and the new German Alliance, and even to restore Poland.
Pierre listened attentively, several times respectfully restraining his impulse to contradict his friend.
“Do you see that this time we are not being as foolish as we seem?” Prince Andrei concluded.
“Yes, yes, but why won’t they propose this plan to Napoleon himself?” Pierre exclaimed. “He would be the first to accept it, if this plan were sincere: he would understand and love any great idea.”
Prince Andrei paused and rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“And apart from that, I am going …” He stopped. “I am going because the life that I lead here, this life – does not suit me!”
“Why not?” Pierre asked in amazement.
“Because, my dearest friend,” said Prince Andrei, standing up with a smile, “for the vicomte and Hippolyte to wander from one drawing room to the next and mull over nonsense and tell fairytales about Mademoiselle Georges or about some ‘girl’ is all well and good, but that role will not do for me. I cannot stand it any longer,” he added.
Pierre’s glance expressed his agreement.
“But here’s another thing. Why is Kutuzov important? And what does it mean to be an adjutant?” asked Pierre with that rare naïvety possessed by some young people who are not afraid of exposing their ignorance with a question.
“You’re the only person who could possibly not know that,” Prince Andrei replied, smiling and shaking his head. “Kutuzov is Suvorov’s right hand, the best Russian general.”
“But how can you be an adjutant? Doesn’t that mean they can order you about?”
“Of course, an adjutant’s influence is absolutely insignificant,” Prince Andrei replied, “but I have to make a start. Besides, it is what my father wanted. I shall ask Kutuzov to give me a unit. And then we shall see …”
“It will be strange, it’s bound to be, for you to fight against Napoleon,” said Pierre, as though assuming that as soon as Prince Andrei reached the war he would have to engage, if not in single-handed combat, then at least in very close action against Napoleon himself.
Prince Andrei smiled pensively at his own thoughts, twisting the wedding ring on his third finger with a graceful, effeminate gesture.
X
A woman’s dress rustled in the next room. As if he had just woken up, Prince Andrei shook himself and his face assumed the expression it had worn in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room. Pierre lowered his feet from the divan. The princess came in. She was wearing a different dress, more homely but just as elegant and fresh. Prince Andrei stood up and courteously moved up an armchair for her by the fireplace, but there was such intense boredom on his face as he did so, the princess would surely have taken offence, had she been able to see it.
“Why, I often wonder,” she began, as always in French, as she hastily seated herself in the armchair, “why did Annette never marry? How foolish you all are, gentlemen, for not marrying her. Forgive my saying so, but you understand nothing at all about women.”
Pierre and Prince Andrei involuntarily exchanged glances and said nothing. But neither their glance nor their silence embarrassed the princess in the least. She carried on prattling in the same way as before.
“What a wrangler you are, Monsieur Pierre,” she said to the young man. “What a wrangler you are, Monsieur Pierre,” she repeated, fussily settling herself into the large armchair.
Folding her little hands over the mound of her waist, she stopped talking, evidently intent on listening. Her face assumed that distinctive, serious expression in which the eyes seem to be gazing inwards – an expression that only pregnant women have.
“I keep arguing with your husband as well; I cannot understand why he wants to go to war,” said Pierre, addressing the princess without a trace of the inhibition so usual in relations between a young man and a young woman.
The princess started. Apparently Pierre’s words had touched a sore spot.
“Ah, that is just what I say!” she said with her society smile. “I do not understand, I absolutely do not understand, why men cannot live without war. Why is it that we women do not want anything, do not need anything? Why you, you can be the judge. I keep telling him: here he is my uncle’s adjutant, a most brilliant position. Everybody knows him so well and appreciates him so. The other day at the Apraksins’ I heard one lady ask: ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrei?’ On my word of honour.”
She laughed.
“He is asked everywhere. He could quite easily be an aide-de-camp … Do you know that only two days ago His Majesty spoke to him most graciously? Annette and I were saying how very easy it would be to arrange. What do you think?”
Pierre looked at Prince Andrei and, noticing that his friend did not like this conversation, made no reply.
“When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t talk of our leaving, don’t even mention it! I don’t wish to hear of it,” said the princess in the same skittish, capricious manner in which she had spoken with Hippolyte in the drawing room, and which was so obviously unsuited to a family circle of which Pierre was ostensibly a member.
“Today, when I thought about having to break off all these dear, precious connections … And then, you know, Andrei.”
She blinked significantly at her husband.
“I’m afraid, I’m so afraid!” she whispered, quivering all the way down her back.
Her husband looked at her as though he were surprised to have noticed that there was someone else apart from Pierre and himself in the room; however, he enquired of the princess with cold civility:
“What are you afraid of, Lise? I can’t understand it,” he said.
“See what egoists all men are! All, all of them egoists! Out of nothing but his own whimsy, God only knows why, he is abandoning me, shutting me away alone in the country.”
“With my father and sister, do not forget,” Prince Andrei said quietly.
“All the same alone, without my friends … And he does not want me to be afraid.” Her tone was peevish now, her short little lip was raised, lending her face an expression that was not joyful, but feral, squirrel-like. She stopped speaking, as if she found it improper to talk of her future delivery in front of Pierre, while this was in fact the very essence of the matter.
“Even so, I do not understand what you are afraid of,” Prince Andrei enunciated slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on his wife.
The princess blushed and fluttered her hands in despair.
“No, Andrei, it’s just as I said: you have changed so much, so very much.”
“Your doctor says you should go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrei. “You ought to go to bed.”
The princess said nothing, and suddenly her short lip with the faint moustache began trembling. Prince Andrei stood up and, with a shrug of his shoulders, began pacing around the room.
Pierre gazed through his spectacles in naïve surprise, first at one, then at the other and began fidgeting on the spot, as if he kept wanting to get up and then changing his mind.
“What does it matter to me that Monsieur Pierre is here,” the little princess said suddenly, and her pretty face suddenly dissolved into a tearful, unlovely grimace. “I have wanted to ask you for a long time, Andrei: What has made you change so much towards me. What have I done to you? You are going to the army, you have no pity for me. Why?”
“Lise!” was all that Prince Andrei said, but the word expressed both supplication and threat and also, above all, the assurance that she would regret what she had said; but she continued hastily:
“You treat me like a sick woman or a child. I see everything. You were not like this six months ago, were you?”
“Lise, will you please stop this,” said Prince Andrei even more emphatically.
Pierre, who had become more and more agitated in the course of this conversation, stood up and walked across to the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of her tears and was ready to start crying himself.
“Calm down, princess. It only seems like that to you, because, I assure you, I myself have experienced … the reason … because … No, I beg your pardon, this is no place for an outsider … Please, calm down … Goodbye … Please excuse me …”
He bowed, preparing to leave. Prince Andrei took his arm and stopped him.
“No, wait, Pierre. The princess is so kind, she would not wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“Yes, he thinks only of himself,” said the princess, making no effort to restrain her angry tears.
“Lise,” Prince Andrei said coldly, raising his tone of voice to a level that indicated his patience had been exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression on the princess’s beautiful little face was replaced by an expression of fearful appeal that aroused compassion; she cast her husband a sullen glance out of her lovely eyes, and her face assumed the timid expression of a dog rapidly but feebly wagging its lowered tail in a confession of guilt.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” said the princess and, gathering up the folds of her dress in one hand, she went up to her husband and kissed him on his brown forehead.
“Bon soir, Lise,” said Prince Andrei, rising and kissing her hand courteously, as though it were a stranger’s.
XI
The friends were silent. Neither said a word. Pierre kept glancing at Prince Andrei; Prince Andrei rubbed his forehead with his small hand.
“Let’s go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, getting up and moving towards the door.
They entered a dining room newly decorated in an elegant and rich style. Everything, from the napkins to the silver, porcelain and crystal, bore the special imprint of that newness and elegance which distinguish the household of a young married couple. In the middle of supper Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the table and, like a man who has held something in his heart for a long time and suddenly decides to speak out, he began talking with an air of nervous irritation that Pierre had never seen in his friend before.
“Never, never marry, my friend, that is my advice to you, do not marry until you can tell yourself that you have done everything that you could, and until you have stopped loving the woman that you have chosen, until you can see her clearly, or you will commit a grievous and fatal error. Marry as an old man no longer good for anything … Or everything that is fine and exalted in you will be destroyed. It will all be frittered away on trifles. Yes, yes, yes! Do not look at me with such amazement. If you expect anything of yourself in the future, then you will feel at every step that for you everything is over, all doors are closed, except to the drawing room, where you will stand on the same level as the household flunkey and the idiot … I tell you!”
He gestured emphatically with his hand.
Pierre removed his spectacles, which changed the expression of his face, making his kindness even more obvious, and looked at his friend in surprise.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrei, “is a lovely woman. She is one of those rare women with whom one need not be concerned for one’s honour; but, my God, what would I not give now not to be married! You are the only person I have told about this, because I am so fond of you.”
As he said this Prince Andrei resembled even less than before the gentleman who had sprawled in Anna Pavlovna’s armchair, narrowing his eyes as he pronounced French phrases through clenched teeth. Every muscle in his lean, brownish face was quivering in nervous animation; his eyes, in which the fire of life had earlier seemed extinguished, now glowed brightly, glinting and glittering. It was clear that the more listless he seemed at ordinary times, the more intensely energetic he was at such moments of almost morbid agitation.
“You don’t understand why I say that,” he went on. “It’s an entire life story. You talk about Bonaparte and his career,” he said, although Pierre had not even mentioned Bonaparte. “You talk about Bonaparte, but Bonaparte graduated from a course at the artillery college and went out into the world when there was war and the road to glory was open to everyone.”
Pierre looked at his friend, clearly prepared in advance to agree with whatever he might say.
“Bonaparte went out into the world and immediately found the place he was meant to occupy. And who were his friends? Who was Josephine Beauharnais? My five years of life since I left the Corps de Pages have been nothing but drawing rooms, balls, illicit affairs, idleness. Now I am setting out to war, to the greatest war that there has ever been, and I know nothing and am good for nothing. I am amiable and sharp-tongued, and I am listened to at Anna Pavlovna’s, but I have forgotten what I used to know. I have only just begun to read, but it is all a jumble. And there can be no soldier without knowledge of military history, mathematics and fortifications. And this stupid society, without which my wife cannot live, and these women … I have known success in high society. The most exquisite of women have flung themselves at me. But if you could only know what all these exquisite women are like, and women in general! My father is right. He says that nature is not all-wise, because she was unable to devise a means for the propagation of humankind without woman. Egotism, vanity, stupidity, pettiness in all things – that is all women for you when they show themselves as they are. Look at them in society and there seems to be something to them, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing! No, do not marry, my dear friend, do not marry,” Prince Andrei concluded, and he shook his head as emphatically as if everything he had said were a truth that no one could possibly doubt.
“I think it is funny,” said Pierre, “that you regard yourself, yourself as unqualified, and your life as a spoiled life. You have everything, everything ahead of you. And you …”
He did not say what it was Andrei did, but his tone alone revealed how highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected from him in the future.
In the very best, the most friendly and direct of relationships, flattery or compliments are necessary, as grease is needed to make wheels turn.
“I’m a failure,” said Prince Andrei, but from the proud way in which he raised his handsome head so high and the bright gleam in his eyes, it was clear how little he believed in what he had said. “But why bother talking about me? Let’s talk about you,” he said, pausing for a moment and smiling at his own consoling thoughts. That smile was instantly reflected on Pierre’s face.
“Why bother talking about me?” said Pierre, extending his mouth into a carefree, jolly smile. “What am I? I am an illegitimate son.”
And suddenly, for the first time in the whole evening, he blushed a deep crimson. It had obviously cost him a great effort to say that. “With no name and no fortune. But what of it, it is really …”
But he did not say what it really was.
“I am free for the time being, and I like it. I simply do not know what I ought to start doing. I wanted to ask your serious advice.”
Prince Andrei looked at him with kindly eyes. But even so his friendly and affectionate glance expressed an awareness of his own superiority.
“You are dear to me, especially because, in the whole of our high society, you are the only person who is alive. You’re fortunate. Choose whatever you like, it doesn’t matter. You will always fit in anywhere, but just one thing: stop going to see these Kuragins, leading that kind of life. It doesn’t suit you at all: all this bingeing and playing the hussar, and all the rest of it.”
“Do you know what,” said Pierre, as if a happy thought had just occurred to him, “seriously, I’ve been thinking that for a long time. Living like that I cannot make decisions, or think anything through. My head hurts, I have no money. He invited me today, I shan’t go.”
“Give me your word, your word of honour, that you won’t go!”
“Word of honour.”
“Make sure, now.”
“Of course.”
XII
It was after one in the morning when Pierre left his friend’s house. It was a bright St. Petersburg June night. Pierre got into a cabby’s carriage with the intention of going home. But the closer he came, the more strongly he felt the impossibility of getting to sleep on this night that was more like an evening or a morning. He could see for a long way in the empty streets. He pictured Prince Andrei’s animated, handsome face and heard his words – not about his relations with his wife (that did not interest Pierre) – but his words about the war and the future life that might await his friend. Pierre loved and admired his friend so unconditionally that he could not accept that, the moment Prince Andrei desired it, everyone would not acknowledge him as a remarkable and great man, whose nature was to command, not to obey. Pierre simply could not imagine that anyone at all, even Kutuzov, for instance, would have the courage to issue commands to a man so evidently born to take the leading role in everything as he conceived Prince Andrei to be. He imagined his friend before the assembled troops, on a white steed, with a terse, forceful speech on his lips; he imagined his courage, his successes, his heroism and everything that most young men imagine for themselves. Pierre recalled that he had promised to repay a small gambling debt today to Anatoly, at whose house the usual company of gamblers had been due to gather that evening.
“Go to Kuragin’s,” he said to the driver, thinking only of where he could spend the remainder of the night, and completely forgetting the promise he had given Prince Andrei not to visit Kuragin.
On arriving at the porch of the large house in which Anatole Kuragin lived beside the Cavalry Guards barracks, he recalled his promise, but immediately, as happens with those people who are described as lacking in character, he wanted desperately to go in and take another glance at that dissolute life with which he was so familiar and so bored, and the thought came to him of itself that the promise he had given did not mean anything and, moreover, he had also promised Anatoly, before Prince Andrei, that he would bring the money he owed: finally, he thought that all these words of honour were mere conventions, without any definite meaning, especially if you realised that tomorrow perhaps he would die or something so unusual would happen to him that nothing would be honourable or dishonourable any longer.
He walked up to the well-lit porch, on up the stairs and went in through an open door. There was nobody in the sumptuous entrance hall, but there were empty bottles lying about, a heap of bent playing-cards in the corner, cloaks and galoshes; there was a smell of wine; he could hear talking and shouting in the distance.
Evidently the gambling and supper were already over, but the guests had not yet departed. Pierre took off his cloak and went into the first room, in the centre of which there stood a life-size statue of a racehorse. Here he could hear the racket from the next room more clearly, the familiar sound of six or eight men laughing and shouting. He went into the next room, where the remains of supper were still on the table. About eight young men, all without frock coats and mostly in military riding breeches, were crowding around an open window and all shouting incomprehensibly in Russian and French.
“I bet a hundred with Chaplin!” shouted one.
“Make sure you don’t support him!” shouted another.
“I’m for Dolokhov!” shouted a third. “Part our hands, Kuragin!”
“All in one breath, or you’ve lost!” shouted a fourth.
“Yakov, let’s have the bottle, Yakov!” shouted the master of the house, a tall, statuesquely handsome fellow standing in the middle of the crowd. “Stop, gentlemen. Here he is, Pierre!”
“Ah! Pyotr! Petrusha! Peter the Great!”
“Peter the Stout!” everybody began shouting from every side, crowding round him.
Every one of the red or blotchy young faces expressed delight at the sight of Pierre, who removed his spectacles and wiped them as he looked at all this crowd.
“I don’t understand a thing. What’s going on?” he asked with a good-humoured smile.
“Stop, he’s not drunk. Give me a bottle,” said Anatole, and taking a glass from the table, he went up to Pierre.
“First of all, drink.”
Pierre began drinking glass after glass without speaking, peering out from under his brows at the drunken guests, who had crowded round the window again, discussing something that he did not understand. He drank one glass at a gulp; Anatole poured him another with a meaningful expression. Pierre drank it resignedly, but more slowly than the first. Anatole poured a third. Pierre drank that one too, although he paused twice in order to catch his breath. Anatole stood beside him, gazing by turns with his beautiful, big eyes at the glass, the bottle and Pierre. Anatole was a handsome fellow: tall and full-bodied, white-skinned and ruddy-cheeked; he had such a high chest that his head was inclined backwards, which gave him a haughty air. He had a lovely fresh mouth, thick light-brown hair, slanting black eyes and a general appearance of strength, health and the good nature of vivacious youth. But his beautiful eyes with the wonderful, regular black brows seemed to have been made less for looking than for being looked at. They seemed incapable of changing their expression. It was only clear that he was drunk from his red face, and even more so from his unnaturally out-thrust chest and the wide stare of his eyes. Even though he was drunk and the upper half of his mighty body was clad in nothing but a shirt open at the chest, from the faint aroma of perfume and soap which surrounded him, mingling with the smell of the wine he had drunk, from his hairstyle, painstakingly pomaded in place that morning, from the elegant cleanness of his plump hands and superbly fine linen, from that distinctive whiteness and delicate smoothness of his skin, the aristocrat was apparent even in his present condition, by virtue of the habit, acquired in childhood, of painstaking and lavish care for his own person.
“Come on, drink it all! Eh!” he said seriously, handing Pierre the last glass.
“No, I don’t want to,” said Pierre, faltering halfway through the glass. “Well, what’s going on?” he added with the expression of a man who has fulfilled his initial obligation and believes that he now has the right to join in the common pursuit.
“Drink it all, eh?” Anatole repeated, opening his eyes wider, lifting the unfinished glass in his white hand, his arm bared to the elbow. He had the look of a man doing something important, because at that moment he was focusing all his energy on holding the glass straight and saying exactly what he wanted to say.
“I told you, I don’t want to,” replied Pierre, putting on his spectacles and walking away.
“What are you shouting about?” he asked the crowd that had gathered round the window. Anatole stood and thought for a moment, handed the glass to a servant and, smiling with his lovely mouth, also went over to the window.
On Fridays Anatole Kuragin received everyone at his home, they played cards and ate supper there, then spent most of the night out. On that day the session of faro had developed into a protracted game for high stakes. Anatole had lost a little, and since he had no passion for gambling, but played out of habit, he had soon dropped out. One rich man, a life-hussar, had lost a lot, and one Semyonovsky Regiment officer, Dolokhov, had won from everyone. After the game they had sat down to supper very late. An extremely serious Englishman, who described himself as a traveller, had said that he had been given to believe that Russians drank far more heavily than he discovered they actually did. He had said that in Russia they drank nothing but champagne, but if they would drink rum, then he proposed a wager that he would drink more than anyone else present. Dolokhov, the officer who had won more than everyone else that evening, had said it wasn’t worth making a wager simply on a bottle of rum, and he had offered to drink the whole bottle without taking it from his lips, and also while sitting on the second-floor window-ledge with his legs dangling outside. The Englishman had proposed the wager. Anatole had accepted the wager for Dolokhov, that is, that Dolokhov would drink the full bottle of rum sitting on the ledge. Pierre came in just when the servants were starting to remove the frame that prevented anyone from sitting on the outside window-ledge. The second-storey window was high enough for someone falling from it to be killed. Drunken and amicable faces on all sides kept telling Pierre what was going on, as if it were particularly important for Pierre to know the state of affairs. Dolokhov was an officer in a Guards infantry regiment, of medium height, sinewy and solidly built, with a broad, full chest, extremely curly hair and light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers, he wore no moustache, and his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was fully visible. It was an extremely agreeable mouth, despite the fact that it almost never smiled. The lines of this mouth were curved with remarkable subtlety. At its centre the upper lip pressed down vigorously on the firm lower one; sharp folds in the corners constantly formed something like two smiles, one on each side, and all of this, together with a direct, somewhat insolent, but ardent and intelligent gaze, produced such an extraordinary impression it made people wonder about the owner of such a beautiful and strange face. Women liked Dolokhov, and he was fully convinced there was no such thing as a woman whose character was entirely above reproach.
Dolokhov was a young man of good family, but not rich, although he lived extravagantly and gambled constantly. He almost always won; but no one, not even in his absence, dared to attribute his constant success to anything other than good luck, a clear mind and indomitable will-power. In their hearts, everyone who gambled with him assumed he was a card-sharp, although they did not dare to say so. Now, when he had proposed his strange wager, the drunken company took an especially keen interest in what he intended to do, precisely because those who knew him knew that he would do what he had said. Pierre also knew it and that was the only reason why he greeted Dolokhov without attempting to raise any objection to his intentions.
The rest of the company consisted of three officers, the Englishman, who had been seen in St. Petersburg in the most diverse circles, and a certain Moscow gambler, a fat married man who was much older than everyone else, and yet was on familiar terms with all these young people.
The bottle of rum had been brought; the frame that prevented anyone sitting on the sloping ledge of the window was being broken out by two servants in gaiters and kaftans, who were clearly working in haste, feeling intimidated by the shouted advice from the gentlemen surrounding them.
With his chest thrust out, his expression unchanging, neither walking round the others nor asking them to make way, Anatole forced his strong body through the crowd at the window, went up to the frame, wrapped both his white hands in a frock coat that was lying on a divan, and struck at the panes of glass, breaking them out.
“Now now, your excellency,” said a servant, “you’re only getting in the way and you’ll cut your hands.”
“Get out of it, you fool, eh?” said Anatole. He took hold of the crossbeam of the frame and began pulling. Several other hands also joined in; they pulled, and the frame sprang out of the window with a crack, so that those pulling it almost fell over.
“Out with it all, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dolokhov.
“Listen,” Anatole said to Pierre. “You understand? The Englishman’s boasting … eh? … National pride? … Eh? … All right? …”
“All right,” said Pierre, gazing with a sinking heart at Dolokhov as, grasping the bottle of rum in his hands, he approached the window, through which could be seen the light of the sky, where dawn and dusk were merging. Rolling up the sleeves of his shirt purposefully after sticking the bottle of rum in his pocket, Dolokhov leapt smartly up to the window.
“Listen!” he shouted, standing on the sill and addressing the room.
Everybody stopped talking.
“I wager” (he spoke in French so that the Englishman would understand him, but he did not speak that language too well) “I wager fifty imperials … Want to make it a hundred?” he added, addressing the Englishman.
“No, fifty,” said the Englishman.
“All right, fifty imperials, that I will drink this whole bottle of rum without lifting it from my lips, and that I’ll drink it sitting outside the window, on this spot here” (he leaned out and pointed to the jutting slope of the wall outside the window) “and without holding on … Right?”
“Very good,” said the Englishman.
Anatole turned towards the Englishman and, grabbing him by the button of his tailcoat and looking down on him from above (the Englishman was short), he began explaining in English what was already clear to everyone.
“Stop!” cried Dolokhov, banging the bottle against the side of the window to draw attention to himself. “Stop, Kuragin, listen. If anyone else does the same, then I pay a hundred imperials. Understand?”
The Englishman nodded, without making it at all clear whether he intended to accept this new wager. Anatole kept hold of the Englishman and even though the latter tried to convey by nodding that he had understood everything, Anatole translated Dolokhov’s words into English for him. A young, skinny boy, a life-hussar who had lost that evening, climbed up into the window, stuck his head out and looked down.
“Oooh …” he exclaimed, looking out and down through the window to the stone of the pavement.
“Attention!” yelled Dolokhov and jerked the officer out of the window. He jumped awkwardly back down into the room, tripping over his tangled spurs.
Setting the bottle on the window-ledge so it would be easy to pick up, Dolokhov climbed cautiously and carefully out of the window. Lowering his legs and wedging himself against the sides of the window with both hands, he shifted his position, settled himself, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right, then to the left and took hold of the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and set them on the windowsill, although it was already quite light. Dolokhov’s back in the white shirt and his curly head were lit up from both sides. Everybody was crowding round the window. The Englishman was standing at the front. Pierre was smiling without speaking. The old Muscovite, his face frightened and angry, suddenly pushed forward, trying to grab Dolokhov by the shirt.
“Gentlemen, this is stupidity, he’ll fall and be killed,” he said. Anatole stopped him.
“Don’t touch him, you’ll startle him, he’ll be killed. Eh? … What then? … Eh?”
Dolokhov looked round, adjusting his position and once again wedging himself with his hands. His face was neither pale nor red, but cold and angry.
“If anyone tries to meddle again,” he said, uttering each word separately through thin, compressed lips, “I’ll chuck him down there right now. It’s slippery enough to slide right off, but he interferes with his stupid nonsense … Right!”
After saying “Right!” he turned back again, lowered his hands, picked up the bottle and raised it to his mouth, tilting his head back and throwing his free hand upwards for balance. One of the servants, who had begun clearing up the broken glass, stopped in a bent-over position with his eyes fixed on the window and Dolokhov’s back. Anatole stood up straight, his eyes wide open. The Englishman pursed his lips and watched from the side. The old Muscovite fled into the corner of the room and lay down on a divan with his face to the wall. Some stood still with their mouths open, some with their hands raised. Pierre covered his face, where a faint, forgotten smile still lingered, although it now expressed horror and fear. Nobody said a word. Pierre took his hands away from his eyes; Dolokhov was sitting in the same position, but his head was tilted right back so that the curly hair at the back touched the collar of his shirt and the hand holding the bottle was rising higher and higher, shuddering with the effort. The bottle was clearly emptying and at the same time rising higher, as his head tilted back. “What is taking so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had gone by. Suddenly Dolokhov leaned backwards bodily and his hand began shaking nervously: this shuddering was enough to shift his whole body sitting on the steep slope. He changed position and his hands and head began to shake even more strongly from the effort. One hand was raised to grab hold of the windowsill, but then lowered again. Pierre closed his eyes and told himself that he would not open them again. Suddenly he sensed everything around him beginning to stir. He peeped: Dolokhov was standing on the windowsill, his face pale and elated.
DOLOKHOV’S WAGER WITH THE ENGLISHMAN Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_a6d8f629-bfe0-5b4a-a76c-97b278d89ee5)
“Empty!”
He tossed the bottle to the Englishman, who deftly caught it. Then Dolokhov jumped down from the window. He smelled strongly of rum.
“Eh? How’s that? Eh?” Anatole asked everybody. “What a splendid trick!”
“To hell with the lot of you!” said the old Muscovite. The Englishman had taken out his purse and was counting out the money. Dolokhov was scowling in silence. Pierre, in a bewildered state, walked around the room, smiling and breathing heavily.
“Gentlemen, who wishes to wager with me? I’ll do the same,” he suddenly blurted out. “And I don’t even need a wager, so there. Tell them to give me a bottle. I’ll do it … tell them.”
“What are you saying? Have you lost your mind? Who’s going to let you? You get dizzy on the stairs,” voices said on every side.
“It was mean of us to leave Dolokhov to sacrifice his life alone. I’ll drink it, let me have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, hammering on the table with a determined, drunken gesture, and he started clambering up to the window. They grabbed him by the arms and led him off to the next room. But Dolokhov was unable to walk; they carried him over to a divan and doused his head with cold water.
Someone wanted to go home, someone suggested not going home but on to somewhere else, all of them together: Pierre insisted on this more than anyone. They put on their cloaks and set off. The Englishman went home and Dolokhov fell into a half-dead, insensible sleep on Anatole’s divan.
XIII
Prince Vasily kept the promise that he had made to the elderly woman at Anna Pavlovna’s soirée who had petitioned him about her only son Boris. His Majesty was informed of him and, unlike other young men, he was transferred to the Semyonovsky Guards regiment as an ensign. But Boris was not appointed an adjutant or attached to Kutuzov, for all Anna Mikhailovna’s soliciting and scheming. Shortly after Anna Pavlovna’s soirée, Anna Mikhailovna went back to Moscow, straight to her rich relatives the Rostovs, with whom she stayed in Moscow and in whose house her adored little Borenka had been educated since he was a child and had lived for years. Now, though he had only just been taken into the army, he had immediately been made a Guards ensign. The Guards had already left St. Petersburg on the 10th of August and her son, who had remained in Moscow to be fitted for his uniform, was due to catch them up on the road to Radzivilov.
It was the name-day of two members of the Rostov family – the mother and her youngest daughter, both called Natalya. All morning, teams of horses had been constantly driving up and away, bringing well-wishers to Countess Rostova’s large house on Povarskaya Street, which was known to the whole of Moscow. The countess and her elder daughter sat in the drawing room with the guests, who endlessly came and went. The countess was a woman with a thin, oriental-looking face, about forty-five years old, clearly exhausted by her children, of whom she had had twelve. A slowness in her movements and speech, due to her frailty, lent her a grave air that inspired respect. As part of the household, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya sat beside her, helping with the business of receiving the guests and engaging them in conversation. The young people were in the back rooms, feeling no need to participate in the receiving of visits. The count was greeting and seeing off the guests and inviting them to dinner.
“I am very, very grateful, ma chère or mon cher” (he said ma chère or mon cher to everyone without exception, making not the slightest distinction between people of higher or lower standing than himself), “for myself and for my dear name-day girls. Be sure to come for dinner, now. I cordially invite you on behalf of the whole family, ma chère.”
He spoke these words to everyone without exception or variation, with an identical expression on his plump, jolly, clean-shaven face, and with an identically firm handshake and repeated short bows. After seeing off one guest, the count went back to another who was still in the drawing room: drawing up an armchair and with the air of a man who likes and knows how to enjoy life, rakishly planting his feet wide apart and setting his hands on his knees, he swayed impressively, ventured conjectures concerning the weather and consulted people about his health, sometimes in Russian, sometimes in very bad but self-assured French, then once again, with the air of a man who is tired but resolute in the fulfilment of his duty, went to see the guest off, arranging the sparse grey hairs on his bald patch, and once again invited the guest to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the hallway he went via the conservatory and the footmen’s room to look into the large marble hall, where they were laying the table for eighty places and, looking at the footmen carrying the silver and porcelain, extending the tables and spreading out the damask tablecloths, he called over Dmitri Vasilievich, the nobleman’s son who managed all his affairs and said:
“Right, Mitenka, now you make sure everything is all right. Good, good,” he said, surveying with satisfaction the huge extended table. “And don’t forget the order of the wines; the whole thing is in the serving. See to it …” And he walked away, sighing complacently, back to the drawing room.
“Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!” the countess’s huge footman announced in a deep bass as he stepped through the doors of the drawing room.
The countess thought for a moment and took a sniff from a gold snuffbox decorated with a portrait of her husband.
“These visits have quite worn me out,” she said. “Well then, she shall be the last I receive. She is very prim and proper. Show her in,” she said to her servant in a sad voice, as if she were saying: “Very well then, finish me off.”
A tall, plump lady with a proud face and her pretty little daughter entered the drawing room in a rustling of dresses.
“Dear countess, how long it has been … she has had to stay in bed, the poor child … at the ball at the Razumovskys … and Countess Apraksina … I was so glad.”
The sound of lively women’s voices interrupting each other mingled with the sound of dresses rustling and chairs being drawn up. There began one of those conversations which are initiated precisely in order that, at the first pause, one may rise, rustle one’s dress, and say: “I am so delighted! Mama and Countess Apraksina wish you good health …” – and, rustling one’s dress yet again, proceed to the hallway, put on one’s fur coat or cloak and depart.
The conversation turned to the most important news in town at the time, the illness of a famous, rich and handsome man of Empress Catherine’s day, the old Count Bezukhov, and his illegitimate son Pierre, who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna Scherer’s soirée.
“I feel awfully sorry for the poor count,” said the guest, “his health was bad enough already, and now comes this distress from his son. It will be the death of him!”
“What’s that?” asked the countess, as though she did not know what her guest was talking about, despite having already heard the reason for Count Bezukhov’s distress at least fifteen times.
“That’s modern-day education for you! While he was abroad,” the guest continued, “this young man was left to his own devices and now they’re saying in St. Petersburg that he has done such terrible things, he has been banished here with a police escort.”
“Well, I never!” said the countess.
“He chose his friends badly,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna interjected. “They say that he and Prince Vasily’s son, and a certain Dolokhov, got up to God only knows what. And they have both suffered for it. Dolokhov has been reduced to the ranks and Bezukhov’s son has been banished to Moscow. As for Anatole Kuragin – his father hushed things up somehow. He managed to stay in the Horse Guards regiment.”
“But what can they have done?” asked the countess.
“They are absolute bandits, especially Dolokhov,” said the guest. “He is the son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a respectable lady, but what of it? Can you imagine, the three of them got hold of a bear from somewhere and took it off with them in a carriage to see some actresses? The police came running to calm them down, and they caught the local policeman, tied him back to back with the bear and threw the bear into the Moika river; the bear was swimming along with the policeman on top of it.”
“A fine figure of a policeman, ma chère,” the count exclaimed, splitting his sides laughing, with an air of approval which suggested that, in spite of his age, he would not have minded taking part in such fun and games.
“Oh, how terrible! What is there to laugh at, count?”
But the ladies laughed too, despite themselves.
“They barely managed to rescue the unfortunate man,” the guest continued. “And that is the clever way in which the son of Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov amuses himself!” she added. “And they said he was so well brought-up and intelligent. This is what all that foreign upbringing has led to. I hope no one here will receive him, despite his wealth. They wanted to introduce him to me. I positively refused: I have daughters.”
“But this is a quite excellent prank, ma chère. Good for them!” said the count, making no attempt to restrain his laughter.
The guest looked at him in prim annoyance.
“Ah, ma chère Marya Lvovna,” he said in his badly pronounced poor French, “youth must sow its wild oats. Really and truly!” he added. “Your husband and I were no saints either. We had our little peccadilloes too.”
He winked at her; the guest did not reply.
“Why do you say that this young man is so rich?” asked the countess, leaning away from the girls, who immediately pretended not to be listening. “Surely he only has illegitimate children. And I think … Pierre is also illegitimate.”
The guest gestured vaguely.
“He has twenty illegitimate children, I believe.”
Princess Anna Mikhailovna intervened in the conversation, clearly wishing to demonstrate her connections and her knowledge of all the affairs of high society.
“That is the point,” she said significantly, and also in a half-whisper. “Count Kirill Vladimirovich’s reputation is well known … He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favourite.”
“What a fine man he was,” said the countess, “only last year! I never laid eyes on a more handsome man.”
“He is greatly changed now,” said Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “What I wanted to say,” she continued, “is that on his wife’s side, the direct heir to the entire estate is Prince Vasily, but Pierre was greatly loved by his father, who provided for his education and wrote to His Majesty … So no one knows, if he dies (and he is in such a bad way that it is expected any minute, and Lorrain has come from St. Petersburg), who will get this immense fortune, Pierre or Prince Vasily. Forty thousand souls and millions upon millions. I know this so well, because Prince Vasily told me himself. And Kirill Vladimirovich is a third cousin of mine on my mother’s side, and he was Borya’s godfather,” she added, as though she attached no importance whatever to that circumstance.
“Prince Vasily arrived in Moscow yesterday. He is going for some audit, I am told,” said the guest.
“Yes, but between you and me,” said the princess, “that is a mere pretext: he has actually come to see Count Kirill Vladimirovich after hearing that he is in such a bad way.”
“Nonetheless, ma chère, it was an excellent prank,” said the count and then, noticing that the senior guest was not listening to him, he turned to the young ladies. “That policeman cut a fine figure, I imagine.”
And demonstrating the policeman waving his arms, he began laughing again with that resonant bass laughter that shook his entire plump body, the way people laugh who always eat and, especially, drink well.
XIV
Silence fell. The countess looked at her guest with a polite smile, but without disguising the fact that she would now be not in the least offended if her guest were to get up and leave. The guest’s daughter was already adjusting her dress and glancing enquiringly at her mother, when suddenly from the next room there was the sound of several male and female feet running towards the door, the clatter of a stool dragged and overturned, and a thirteen-year-old girl with the skirt of her short muslin frock oddly tucked up came bursting into the room and stopped in the middle. She seemed to have misjudged her speed and galloped so far in by accident. That very same moment four figures appeared in the doorway: two young men – one a student with a crimson collar, the other a Guards officer – a fifteen-year-old girl and a fat, ruddy-cheeked boy in a child’s smock.
The count leapt up and, swaying on his feet, spread his arms wide around the girl who had run in.
“Ah, there she is!” he cried, laughing. “The name-day girl! Ma chère name-day girl!”
“My dear, there is a time for everything,” the countess said to her daughter, obviously merely in order to say something, because it was clear at a glance that her daughter was not the least bit afraid of her. “You’re always spoiling her,” she added, speaking to her husband.
“Hello, my dear, happy name-day to you,” said the guest. “What a charming child!” she added, addressing her flattery to the mother.
The black-eyed, large-mouthed and plain but lively little girl, with her childish, exposed little shoulders heaving and contracting in their bodice after the fast run, with her tangle of black curls swept backwards, thin little bare arms and fast little legs in little lacy pantaloons and little open shoes, was at that sweet age when the little girl is no longer a child, but the child is not yet a young woman. Twisting away from her father, quick and graceful and evidently unused to the drawing room, she ran across to her mother and, paying no attention to her rebuke, hid her flushed little face in the lacework of her mother’s mantilla and burst into laughter.
“Mama! We wanted to marry Boris … Ha, ha!… To the doll … Ha, ha! Yes … Ah … Mimi …” she said through her laughter. “And … Ah … He ran away.”
She pulled a large doll out from under her skirt and showed it to them: a black, broken-off nose, a cracked cardboard head and kidskin bottom, legs and arms that dangled loosely at the elbows and knees, but still with a fresh, elegant, carmine smile and thick-black, arching brows.
The countess had been acquainted for four years with this Mimi, Natasha’s inseparable friend, a gift from her godfather.
“You see?” And Natasha could not say any more (everything seemed funny to her). She fell down onto her mother and broke into such loud, resounding laughter that everybody, even the prim and proper guest, began laughing in spite of themselves. This laughter could even be heard in the footman’s room. The countess’s menservants exchanged smiling glances with the visiting liveried footman, who had been sitting glumly on his chair all the while.
“Now, off with you, you and your monster!” said the little girl’s mother, pushing her daughter away in feigned anger. “This is my youngest, a spoilt little girl, as you can see,” she said to the guest.
Tearing her little face away for a moment from her mother’s lacy shawl and glancing up at her, Natasha said quietly through her tears of laughter:
“I feel so embarrassed, mama!” And quick as could be, as if she were afraid of being caught, she hid her face again.
The guest, obliged to admire the family scene, felt it necessary to take some kind of part in it.
“Tell me, my dear,” she said, addressing Natasha, “who is this Mimi to you? Your daughter, I suppose?”
Natasha did not like this guest and the tone in which she condescended to make conversation with a child.
“No, madame, she’s not my daughter, she’s a doll,” she said, smiling boldly, got up off her mother and sat down beside her eldest sister, demonstrating in this way that she could behave like a big girl.
Meanwhile the entire young generation (Boris the officer, Anna Mikhailovna’s son; Nikolai the student, the count’s eldest son; Sonya, the count’s fifteen-year-old niece; and little Petrushka, the youngest son) had all distributed themselves round the drawing room as if they had suddenly been dropped into cold water and were clearly struggling to restrain within the limits of decorum the excitement and merriment that were still glowing in every feature of their faces. It was plain to see that out there, in the back rooms from which they had come running in so impetuously, their conversations had been more fun than the talk here of town scandals, the weather and Countess Apraksina.
The two young men, student and officer, were childhood friends, both the same age and both handsome, although they were quite unalike. Boris, a tall, fair-haired youth, had a long face with fine, regular features. A calm and thoughtful mind was expressed in his pleasant grey eyes, but in the corners of his still hairless lips there lurked a constantly mocking and slightly cunning smile, which instead of spoiling his expression, seemed in fact to add spice to his fresh, handsome face that was so obviously still untouched by either vice or grief. Nikolai was not very tall, with a broad chest and a very subtle, fine figure. His open face, with soft, wavy, light-brown hair surrounding a prominent, broad forehead, and the ecstatic gaze of his half-closed, prominent brown eyes, always expressed the impression of the moment. Little black hairs had already appeared on his upper lip, and impetuosity and enthusiasm were expressed in his every feature. Both young men bowed and took seats in the drawing room. Boris did this fluently and easily; Nikolai, on the contrary, with almost childish resentment. Nikolai glanced by turns at the guests and the door, evidently with no desire to conceal the fact that he was bored, and hardly even answered the questions put to him by the guests. Boris, on the contrary, immediately found the right tone and informed them with mock gravity that he had known this Mimi doll as a young girl when her nose was still perfect, that she had aged a lot in the five years he had known her, what with her head splitting open right across the skull. Then he enquired after the lady’s health. Everything he said was simple and decorous, neither too witty nor too foolish, but the smile playing about his lips indicated that even as he spoke he did not ascribe the slightest importance to his own words and was speaking purely out of a sense of decorum.
“Mama, what is he speaking like a grown-up for? I don’t want him to,” said Natasha, going up to her mother and pointing at Boris like a capricious child. Boris smiled at her.
“You just want to play dolls with him all the time,” replied Princess Anna Mikhailovna, patting Natasha’s bare shoulder, which shrank away nervously and withdrew into its bodice at the touch of her hand.
“I’m bored,” whispered Natasha. “Mama, nanny is asking if she can go visiting, can she? Can she?” she repeated, raising her voice, with that characteristic capacity of women for quick-wittedness in innocent deception. “She can, mama!” she shouted, barely able to restrain her laughter and, glancing at Boris, she curtseyed to the guests and walked as far as the door, but once outside it started running as fast as her little legs could carry her. Boris became pensive.
“I thought you wanted to go too, maman. Do you need the carriage?” he said, blushing as he addressed his mother.
“Yes, off you go now and tell them to get it ready,” she said, smiling. Boris went out quietly through the door and set off after Natasha; the fat boy in the smock ran behind him angrily, as if he were annoyed by some interruption to his studies.
XV
Of the young people, aside from the countess’s elder daughter, who was four years older than her sister and already behaved like a grown-up, and the young lady visitor, the only ones left in the drawing room were Nikolai and Sonya the niece, who sat there, with that rather artificial, festive smile that many adults believe they should wear when present at other people’s conversations, repeatedly casting tender glances at her cousin. Sonya was a slim, petite brunette with a gentle gaze shaded by long eyelashes, a thick black plait wound twice around her head and sallow skin on her face and especially on her bare, lean but graceful and sinewy arms and neck. With the smoothness of her movements, the gentle flexibility of her little limbs and her rather cunning and reticent manner she involuntarily reminded people of a beautiful but still immature kitten that would become a delightful cat. She evidently thought it proper to indicate her interest in the general conversation with her festive smile but, against her will, her eyes gazed out from under their long lashes at her cousin, who was leaving for the army, with such passionate girlish adoration, that her smile could not possibly have deceived anyone for even a moment, and it was clear that the little cat had only sat down in order to spring up even more energetically and start playing with her cousin just as soon as they got out of this drawing room.
“Yes, ma chère,” said the old count, addressing the guest and pointing to his Nikolai. “His friend Boris there has been appointed an officer, and out of friendship he does not want to be left behind, so he’s abandoning university and this old man and he’s going to join the army. And there was a place all ready for him in the archive and everything. How’s that for friendship!” the count queried.
SONYA Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_8aaa2b9c-56e4-51e1-a803-e833f1a964de)
“But after all, they do say that war has been declared,” said the guest.
“They’ve been saying that for a long time,” the count said, still speaking vaguely. “They’ll say it again a few times, and then again, and leave it at that. How’s that for friendship, then!” he repeated. “He’s joining the hussars.”
Not knowing what to say, the guest shook her head.
“It’s not out of friendship at all,” responded Nikolai, flaring up and speaking as if he were defending himself against a shameful slander. “It’s not at all out of friendship, it’s just that I feel a calling for military service.”
He glanced round at the young lady guest: the young lady was looking at him with a smile, approving the young man’s action.
“We have Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars Regiment, dining with us today. He’s been on leave here and is going to take him back with him. What can one do?” said the count, shrugging and speaking jocularly about a matter that evidently pained him a great deal.
For some reason Nikolai suddenly became angry.
“But I told you, papa, that if you don’t wish to let me go, I shall stay. I know I’m no good for anything but military service. I’m not a diplomat, I don’t know how to conceal what I feel,” he said, gesticulating too enthusiastically for his words and glancing all the time with the coquettishness of handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady guest.
The little cat, devouring him with her eyes, seemed ready at any second to launch into her game and demonstrate her full feline nature. The young lady continued to approve him with her smile.
“Perhaps something might just come of me,” he added, “but I am no good for anything here …”
“Well, well, all right!” said the old count. “He’s always getting worked up. Bonaparte has turned everyone’s heads: everyone thinks about how he rose from a corporal to an emperor. Well, then, if it pleases God …” he added, not noticing the guest’s mocking smile.
“Well, off you go, off you go, Nikolai, I can see you’re keen to be off,” said the countess.
“Not at all,” her son replied, but nonetheless a moment later he got up, bowed and left the room.
Sonya carried on sitting a little longer, smiling more and more falsely all the while, then got up, still with the same smile, and went out.
“How very transparent all these young people’s secrets are!” said Countess Anna Mikhailovna, pointing to Sonya and laughing. The guest laughed.
“Yes,” said the countess, after the ray of sunshine that this young generation had brought into the drawing room had disappeared, and as if she were answering a question that no one had asked her, but which was constantly on her mind. “So much suffering, so much worry,” she continued, “all borne so that we can rejoice in them now. But even now, truly, there is more fear than joy. You’re always afraid, always afraid! It’s the very age that holds so much danger for girls and for boys.”
“Everything depends on upbringing,” said the guest.
“Yes, you are right,” the countess continued. “So far, thank God, I have been my children’s friend and I have their complete trust,” she said, repeating the error of many parents who believe their children keep no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante and if Nikolenka, with his fiery character, should get up to mischief (boys will be boys), then it would be nothing like those Petersburg gentlemen.”
“Yes, they are splendid, splendid children,” agreed the count, who always resolved matters that he found complicated by finding everything splendid. “Just imagine! Decided to join the hussars! What about that, ma chère!”
“What a sweet creature your youngest is,” said the guest, glancing round reproachfully at her own daughter, as though impressing on her with this glance that that was how she ought to be in order to be liked, not the stiff doll that she was. “Full of fun!”
“Yes, full of fun,” said the count. “She takes after me! And what a voice, real talent! She may be my own daughter, but it’s no more than the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, another Salomini. We’ve engaged an Italian to teach her.”
“Is it not rather early? They do say it’s bad for the voice to train it at this age.”
“Oh no, not at all too early!” said the count.
“And what about our mothers getting married at twelve and thirteen?” added Countess Anna Mikhailovna.
“She’s already in love with Boris, how do you like that?” said the countess, smiling gently, glancing at Boris’s mother and, clearly replying to the thought that was always on her mind, she went on: “Well now, you see, if I were strict with her, if I forbade her … God knows what they would do in secret” (the countess meant that they would have kissed), “but as it is I know every word she says. She’ll come running to me this evening and tell me everything herself. Perhaps I do spoil her, but I really think that is best. I was strict with my elder daughter.”
“Yes, I was raised quite differently,” said the elder daughter, the beautiful Countess Vera, with a smile. But a smile did not adorn Vera’s face in the way it usually does: on the contrary, her face became unnatural and therefore unpleasant. The elder daughter Vera was good-looking, she was clever, she was well brought up. She had a pleasant voice. What she had said was just and apt but, strange to say, everyone, even the guest and the countess, glanced round at her as though they wondered why she had said it and felt uneasy.
“People always try to be clever with their oldest children, they want to make something exceptional of them,” said the guest.
“No point in pretending, ma chère! The little countess tried to be clever with Vera,” said the count. “But what of it? She still turned out splendid.”
And then, noticing with the intuition that is more perceptive than the intellect that Vera was feeling embarrassed, he went over to her and stroked her shoulder with his hand.
“Excuse me, I have a few things to see to. Do stay a bit longer,” he added, bowing and preparing to go out.
The guests stood up and left, promising to come to dinner.
“What a way to behave! Ugh, I thought they would never leave!” said the countess after she had seen the guests out.
XVI
When Natasha came out of the drawing room and started running, she only got as far as the conservatory. There she stopped, listening to the talk in the drawing room and waiting for Boris to come out. She was already beginning to feel impatient and stamped her foot, preparing to burst into tears because he was not coming immediately. When she heard the young man’s footsteps, not quiet, but rapid and discreet, the thirteen-year-old girl quickly dashed in among the tubs of plants and hid.
“Boris Nikolaevich!” she said in a deep bass, trying to frighten him, and then immediately started laughing. Catching sight of her, Boris shook his head and smiled.
“Boris, come here please,” she said with a look of significant cunning. He went over to her, making his way between the tubs.
“Boris! Kiss Mimi,” she said, smiling mischievously and holding out her doll.
“Why shouldn’t I kiss her?” he said, moving closer and keeping his eyes on Natasha.
“No, say: ‘I don’t want to.’”
She moved away from him.
“Well, I can say I don’t want to as well, if you like. Where’s the fun in kissing a doll?”
“You don’t want to? Right, then come here,” she said and moved away deeper into the plants and threw the doll onto a tub of flowers. “Closer, closer!” she whispered. She caught hold of the officer by his cuffs and her blushing face was filled with fearful solemnity.
“But do you want to kiss me?” she whispered barely audibly, peering at him warily, smiling and almost crying in her excitement.
Boris blushed.
“You’re so funny!” he said, leaning down towards her and blushing even more, but not trying to do anything and biding his time. The faint hint of mockery was still playing on his lips, on the point of disappearing.
She suddenly jumped up onto a tub so that she was taller than him, put both arms round him so that her slim, bare hands bent around his neck and, flinging her hair back with a toss of her head, kissed him full on the lips.
“Ah, what have I done!” she cried, then slipped, laughing, between the tubs to the other side of the plants, and her frisky little footsteps squeaked rapidly in the direction of the nursery. Boris ran after and stopped her.
“Natasha,” he said, “can I tell you something really special?”
She nodded.
“I love you,” he said slowly. “You’re not a child. Natasha, do what I’m going to ask you.”
“What are you going to ask me?”
“Please, let’s not do what we just did for another four years.”
Natasha stopped and thought for a moment.
“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she said, counting on her slim little fingers. “All right! Is it settled, then?” And a serious smile of joy illuminated her vivacious though not beautiful face.
“Yes!” said Boris.
“For ever?” the girl said. “Until death itself?”
And, taking him by the arm, she calmly walked with him into the nursery. Boris’s handsome, refined face turned red and the expression of mockery disappeared entirely from his lips. He thrust out his chest and sighed in happiness and contentment. His eyes seemed to be gazing far into the future, four years ahead, to the happy year of 1809. The young people gathered once again in the nursery, where they loved to sit most of all.
“No, you shan’t leave!” shouted Nikolai, who did and said everything passionately and impetuously, grabbing Boris by the sleeve of his uniform jacket with one hand and pulling his arm away from his sister with the other. “You have to get married.”
“You have to! You have to!” both the girls cried.
“I’ll be the sexton, Nikolaenka,” shouted Petrushka. “Please, let me be the sexton: ‘Oh Lord have mercy!’”
Although it might seem incomprehensible how much fun young men and girls could find in the wedding of the doll and Boris, one look at the exultation and joy expressed on all their faces when the doll, adorned with Seville orange blossom and wearing a white dress, was set on its kidskin bottom on a little post and Boris, who was ready to agree to anything, was led up to her, and little Petrusha, having donned a skirt, pretended he was the sexton – one look at all this was enough to share in this joy, even without understanding it.
During the dressing of the bride, for decency’s sake Nikolai and Boris were banished from the room. Nikolai walked to and fro, sighing to himself and shrugging his shoulders.
NATASHA ROSTOV AND BORIS DRUBETSKOY Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_95efc402-d45e-597d-a584-8833d54a666b)
“What’s the matter?” asked Boris.
Nikolai glanced at his friend and gestured despairingly with his hand.
“Ah, you don’t know what just happened to me!” he said, clutching his head in his hands.
“What?” asked Boris, in a calm, humorous tone.
“Well, I’m going away, and she … No, I can’t say it!”
“But what is it?” Boris asked again. “Something with Sonya?”
“Yes. Do you know what?”
“What?”
“Agh, it’s incredible! What do you think? Do I have to tell my father after this?”
“But what?”
“You know, I don’t even know myself how it happened, I kissed Sonya today: I have acted vilely. But what am I to do? I am madly in love. But was it bad of me? I know it was bad … What do you say?”
Boris smiled.
“What are you saying? Did you really?” he asked in sly, mocking amazement. “Kissed her straight on the lips? When?”
“Why, just now. You wouldn’t have done that? Eh? You wouldn’t have. Have I acted badly?”
“Well, I don’t know. It all depends on what your intentions are.”
“Well! But of course. That’s right. I told her. As soon as they make me an officer, I shall marry her.”
“That’s amazing,” declared Boris. “How very decisive you are!”
Nikolai laughed, reassured.
“I’m amazed that you have never been in love and no one has ever fallen in love with you.”
“That’s my character,” said Boris, blushing.
“Oh, yes, you’re so very cunning! It’s true what Vera says,” Nikolai said and suddenly began tickling his friend.
“And you’re so very awful. It is true, what Vera says.” And Boris, who disliked being tickled, pushed his friend’s hands away. “You’re bound to do something extraordinary.”
Both of them, laughing, went back to the girls to conclude the rite of marriage.
XVII
The countess felt so tired after the visits that she gave orders not to receive anyone else, and the doorman was given strict instructions to invite everyone who might still arrive with congratulations to dine. Besides that, she wanted to have a confidential talk with her childhood friend Anna Mikhailovna, whom she had not seen properly since her arrival from St. Petersburg. Anna Mikhailovna, with her careworn and agreeable face, moved closer to the countess’s armchair.
“I shall be entirely candid with you,” said Anna Mikhailovna. “There are so few of us old friends left. That is why I value your friendship so.”
The princess looked at Vera and stopped. The countess squeezed her friend’s hand.
“Vera,” said the countess, addressing her elder, and obviously less loved daughter. “How can you be so completely tactless? Surely you can tell you are not needed here? Go to your sisters or …”
The beautiful Vera smiled, apparently not feeling in the least insulted, and went to her room. But as she passed by the nursery she noticed two couples in there, seated symmetrically at the two windows. Sonya was sitting close beside Nikolai, who, with his face flushed, was reading her the first poem that he had ever composed. Boris and Natasha were sitting by the other window without speaking. Boris was holding her hand and he let go of it when Vera appeared. Natasha picked up the little box of gloves standing beside her and began sorting through them. Vera smiled. Nikolai and Sonya looked at her, got up and left the room.
“Natasha,” said Vera to her younger sister, who was intently sorting through the scented gloves. “Why do Nikolai and Sonya run away from me? What secrets do they have?”
“Why, what business is it of yours, Vera?” Natasha asked protectively in her squeaky voice, continuing with her work. She was evidently feeling even more kind and affectionate towards everyone because of her own happiness.
“It’s very stupid of them,” said Vera in a tone that Natasha thought sounded offensive.
“Everyone has their own secrets. We don’t bother you and Berg,” she said, growing heated.
“How stupid! You’ll see, I’m going to tell mama how you carry on with Boris. It’s not right.”
“Natalya Ilinishna treats me perfectly well. I can’t complain,” he said sarcastically.
Natasha did not laugh and looked up at him.
“Don’t, Boris, you’re such a diplomat” (the word diplomat was very popular with the children, in the special meaning which they gave to this word), “it’s really boring,” she said. “Why is she pestering me?”
She turned to Vera.
“You’ll never understand,” she said, “because you’ve never loved anyone, you have no heart, you’re nothing but Madame de Genlis” (this nickname, which was regarded as very insulting, had been given to Vera by Nikolai) “and your greatest pleasure is to cause trouble for others. You can flirt with Berg as much as you like.”
She blurted this out hurriedly and flounced out of the nursery.
The beautiful Vera, who had such an irritating, disagreeable effect on everyone, smiled again with the same smile that meant nothing and, apparently unaffected by what had been said to her, went up to the mirror and adjusted her scarf and hair. As she gazed at her own beautiful face, she visibly turned colder and calmer than ever.
XVIII
In the drawing room the conversation was continuing.
“Ah, my dear,” said the countess, “in my life too not everything is roses. Do you think I cannot see that with the way we live, our fortune will not last long? And it’s all the club, and his generous nature. When we are in the country, what rest do we get there? Theatres, hunts and God knows what else. But there I am talking about myself! Now, how did you arrange everything? I am constantly amazed at you, Annette, at your age, the way you gallop off in a carriage on your own, to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to all the ministers and all the important people, and you know how to deal with them all, I am amazed! Well, how did everything go? I don’t know how to do anything of that sort.”
“Ah my darling,” replied Princess Anna Mikhailovna. “God grant that you may never know how hard it is to be left a widow with no support and with a son whom you love to distraction. One can learn to do everything,” she continued with a certain pride. “My lawsuit taught me that. If I need to see one of these bigwigs, I write a note: ‘Princess so-and-so wishes to see so-and-so’, and I go myself in a cab, two or three times if necessary, even four, until I get what I want. I don’t give a jot what people think of me.”
“Well, how did you ask for Borenka?” asked the countess. “After all, your son is a Guards officer, but Nikolai is going as a cadet. I have no one to intercede for me. Whom did you petition?”
“Prince Vasily. He was very kind. Now he has agreed to everything, and informed His Majesty,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said ecstatically, completely forgetting all the humiliation that she had gone through to achieve her goal.
“And has he grown old, Prince Vasily?” the countess asked. “I haven’t seen him since our dramatics at the Rumyantsevs’. I think he has forgotten all about me. He used to run around after me,” the countess recalled with a smile.
“He is the same as ever,” replied Anna Mikhailovna. “The prince is courteous, positively brimming over with compliments. His high position has not turned his head at all. ‘I regret that I can do so little for you, my dear princess,’ he said to me, ‘ask what you will.’ Yes, he is a splendid man and an excellent relative. But you know, Nathalie, how I love my son. I don’t know what I would not do for his happiness. And my circumstances are so bad,” Anna Mikhailovna continued sadly, lowering her voice, “so very bad that I am now in a quite appalling situation. My miserable lawsuit is consuming everything I have and never makes progress. Can you believe that I do not have, literally do not have, ten kopecks to spare, and I have no idea where to get the money for Boris’s uniform.” She took out a handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred roubles, and I have one twenty-five-rouble note. I am in such a state. My only hope now is Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not support his godchild – after all, he is Boris’s godfather – and provide him with something to live on, then all my efforts will have been wasted, I shall have no money to fit him out.”
The countess shed a few tears and pondered something without speaking.
“I often think, perhaps it is a sin,” said the princess, “but I often think: there is Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov living alone … it’s an immense fortune … and what is he living for? Life is a burden to him, and Borya is only about to start living.”
“He is bound to leave something to Boris,” said the countess.
“God knows. These rich men and grandees are such egotists. But nonetheless I shall go to him now, and take Boris, and tell him to his face what is the matter. Let people think what they will of me, I really do not care, when my son’s destiny depends on it.” The princess got to her feet. “It is now two o’clock. And you are dining at four. I shall have enough time to go there and back.” And with the bearing and manners of a practical St. Petersburg lady who knows how to make good use of her time, Anna Mikhailovna sent for her son and went out into the front hall with him.
“Goodbye, my darling,” she said to the countess, who saw her to the door. “Wish me success,” she added, whispering so that her son would not hear.
“You are going to Count Kirill Vladimirovich, ma chère,” the count said from the dining room as he emerged into the hallway. “If he is feeling better, invite Pierre to dine with us. He has been here before, he danced with the children. You absolutely must invite him. Well, we shall see how Taras excels himself today. They say Count Orlov never had such a dinner as we shall have today.”
XIX
“My dear Boris,” Princess Anna Mikhailovna said to her son as Countess Rostova’s carriage, in which they were sitting, drove along the straw-covered street and into the wide, sand-strewn courtyard of the unfamiliar colonnaded house belonging to Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. “My dear Boris,” said his mother, freeing her hand from under her old coat and laying it on her son’s arm in a gesture of timid affection, “please, set aside your pride. Count Kirill Vladimirovich is after all your godfather, and your future fate depends on him. Remember that, be nice, as you know how to be.”
“If only I knew that anything would come of it, apart from humiliation,” her son replied coldly. “But I promised and I am doing it for you. Only this is the last time, mama. Remember that.”
Even though the carriage was standing at the entrance, the doorman scrutinised the mother and son who, without giving their names, had walked straight up between the two rows of niched statues and into the glazed vestibule, and he asked, casting a significant glance at the countess’s shabby coat, whom they wished to see, the princesses or the count, and, on learning that it was the count, he informed them that his excellency was feeling worse today and his excellency was not receiving anyone.
“We can leave,” the son said in French, evidently delighted at this news.
“My friend!” the mother said in an imploring tone of voice, touching her son’s arm again, as though this touch could calm or excite him.
Boris, fearful of creating a scene in front of the doorman, said nothing, with the expression of a man who has decided to drain his bitter cup to the last drop. Without unbuttoning his greatcoat, he looked enquiringly at his mother.
“My dear fellow,” said Anna Mikhailovna in a soft voice, addressing the doorman, “I know that Count Kirill Vladimirovich is very ill … that is why I have come … I am a relative … I will not disturb him, my dear fellow … And I would only need to see Prince Vasily Sergeevich, he is staying here, after all. Announce us, please.”
The doorman tugged morosely on a cord leading upstairs and turned away.
“Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasily Sergeevich,” he called to the footman in knee-breeches, shoes and tails, who had come running down and was peering out from under the overhang of the stairs.
The mother straightened the folds of her dyed silk dress and, with a glance at herself in the tall Venetian pier glass set into the wall, strode briskly up the stair-carpet in her down-at-heel shoes. “My dear, you promised me,” she said again to her son, trying to rouse him with the touch of her hand. Lowering his eyes, the son walked on gloomily.
PRINCESS ANNA MIKHAILOVNA DRUBETSKAYA AND HER SON BORIS Drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_c91d9f57-55d1-5139-81fa-380a2f824409)
They entered a hall from which one of the doors led into the chambers allotted to Prince Vasily.
As the mother and son, walking out into the centre of the room, were contemplating asking the way from an old footman who had jumped to his feet at their arrival, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Prince Vasily emerged, dressed simply in a velvet smoking jacket with only a single star, accompanied by a handsome, dark-haired man. This man was the famous St. Petersburg physician Lorrain.
“So it is definite,” the prince was saying.
“Prince, errare est humanum, but …” the doctor replied, burring his r’s and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.
“Very well, very well …”
Noticing Anna Mikhailovna and her son, Prince Vasily dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them without speaking, but with an interrogatory air. The son was astonished to see the profound grief that was suddenly expressed in Princess Anna Mikhailovna’s eyes.
“Indeed, what distressing circumstances we are obliged to meet in, prince … Well, how is our dear invalid?” she said, disregarding the cold, insulting gaze directed at her and addressing the prince as her best friend, with whom she could share her woe. Prince Vasily looked in baffled enquiry, first at her, then at Boris. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasily, making no response to the bow, turned back to Anna Mikhailovna and answered her question with a movement of the head and lips which signified the very worst prospect for the invalid.
“Surely not!” exclaimed Anna Mikhailovna. “Oh, that is terrible! The very idea is appalling … This is my son,” she added, indicating Boris. “He wished to thank you himself.”
Boris bowed politely once again.
“Believe me, prince, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.”
“I am glad to have been able to do something to please you, my dear Anna Mikhailovna,” said Prince Vasily, adjusting his jabot, expressing far greater self-importance with his gesture and tone of voice to his satisfied suppliant here in Moscow than he had managed in St. Petersburg, at Anna Scherer’s soirée.
“Try to serve well and be worthy,” he added, addressing Boris with severity. “I am so glad … Are you here on leave?” he enunciated in his impassive tone of voice.
“I am awaiting orders, your excellency, to take up my new posting,” Boris replied, betraying neither annoyance at the prince’s sharp tone nor a desire to engage in conversation, but speaking so calmly and coldly that the prince regarded him more closely.
“Do you live with your mother?”
“I live in the house of Countess Rostova,” said Boris and added, again coldly, “your excellency.”
He evidently said “your excellency” not so much in order to flatter the other man as to restrain him from familiarity.
“That is the Ilya Rostov who married Natalya Z.,” put in Anna Mikhailovna.
“I know, I know,” said Prince Vasily in his monotonous voice, with a typical Petersburgian’s contempt for everything Muscovite.
“I never could understand how Natalya could bring herself to marry that ill-bred bear of a man. A perfectly stupid and ridiculous individual. And a gambler into the bargain, so they say,” he said, thereby demonstrating that for all his contempt for Count Rostov and his like, and for all his important affairs of state, he was not above listening to the rumours of the town.
“But a very kind man, prince,” Anna Mikhailovna remarked, smiling with feeling, as though she were also aware that Count Rostov deserved such a low opinion, but was asking the prince to pity the poor old man.
“What do the doctors say?” the princess asked after a brief pause, once again with an expression of great sadness on her tearful face.
“There is not much hope,” said the prince.
“And I so much wanted to thank my uncle once more for all his kindnesses to me and Borya. He is his godson,” she added in a tone which suggested that this news ought to delight the prince highly.
Prince Vasily began thinking and frowned. Anna Mikhailovna realised that he was afraid of discovering in her a rival for Count Bezukhov’s inheritance. She hastened to reassure him.
“If it were not for my genuine love and devotion to my uncle,” she said, pronouncing the word with an especially casual confidence, “I know his character, noble and straightforward, but he has only the princesses here … They are still young.” She inclined her head and added in a whisper: “Has he fulfilled his final duty, prince? How precious those final minutes are! After all, things cannot get any worse, he must be made ready, if he is in such a bad way. We women, prince,” she said, smiling sweetly, “always know how to say these things. I must see him, no matter how painful it is for me, I am already accustomed to suffering.”
The prince had evidently understood what she was saying, and he had also understood, as he had at Anna Scherer’s soirée, that Anna Mikhailovna was not easily to be put off. “I fear that meeting might be too hard on him, dear Anna Mikhailovna,” he said. “Let us wait until the evening, the doctors have predicted a crisis.”
“But one must not wait, prince, at moments like this. Think, it concerns the salvation of his soul. Aah! The duty of a Christian is a terrible thing.” A door from the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses, the count’s nieces, emerged, with a beautiful, but cheerless, cold face and a long waist quite astonishingly out of proportion with her legs.
Prince Vasily turned to her.
“How is he?”
“Still the same. But now there’s all this noise,” said the princess, examining Anna Mikhailovna like a stranger.
“Ah, my dear, I did not recognise you,” Anna Mihailovna said with a glad smile, springing nimbly across to the count’s niece. “I have come to help you care for your uncle. I can well imagine how much you have suffered,” she added sympathetically, rolling her eyes upwards.
The princess did not even smile, but excused herself and went away. Anna Mikhailovna took off her gloves and, consolidating the gains she had made, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasily to sit beside her.
“Boris,” she said to her son with a smile. “I am going in to see the count … my uncle, and meanwhile you, my friend, go to see Pierre, and don’t forget to pass on the invitation from the Rostovs. They want him to come for dinner. He should not go though, I think,” she said, turning to the count.
“On the contrary,” said the prince, suddenly quite clearly out of sorts. “I should be glad if you would relieve me of that young fellow. He simply hangs about here. The count has not asked for him once.”
He shrugged. A footman led the young man down one staircase and up another to Pyotr Vladimirovich’s rooms.
XX
Boris, thanks to his placid and reserved character, was never at a loss in difficult situations. But now this placidity and reserve were intensified still further by the cloud of happiness that had enveloped him since morning and through which he seemed to see people’s faces, so that observation of his mother’s behaviour and her character became less upsetting. He found the position of petitioner, in which his mother had placed him, painful, but he himself felt in no way to blame.
Pierre had still not managed to choose a career for himself in St. Petersburg and had indeed been banished to Moscow for disorderly conduct. The story that had been recounted at Count Rostov’s house was correct: his presence had made Pierre a party to the tying of the policeman to the bear. He had arrived several days earlier and put up, as always, at his father’s house. Although he had assumed that his story was already known in Moscow and that the ladies surrounding his father, who were always hostile towards him, would use the opportunity to irritate the count, nonetheless on the day of his arrival he had gone to his father’s apartments. On entering the drawing room, the princesses’ usual haunt, he had greeted the ladies sitting there with their embroidery frames and a book, from which one of them was reading aloud. There were three of them. The eldest, a tidy, strict spinster with a long waist, the one who had come out to Anna Mikhailovna, was reading: the younger two, both rosy-cheeked and pretty, only distinguishable from each other by the fact that one had a mole above her lip which made her much prettier, were working at their embroidery frames. Pierre was received like a corpse or a carrier of plague. The eldest princess interrupted her reading and looked at him in silence with fearful eyes: the younger one with the mole, a cheerful and giggly individual, leaned over her embroidery frame to conceal the smile occasioned, no doubt, by the scene that was to come, which she foresaw would be amusing. She tugged at a strand of wool and bent her head close as though examining the stitchwork, scarcely able to restrain her laughter.
“Hello, cousin,” said Pierre. “Do you not recognise me?”
“I recognise you only too well, too well.”
“How is the count’s health? May I see him?” Pierre asked awkwardly, as always, but without embarrassment.
“The count is suffering both physically and morally, and you seem to have taken pains to inflict as much moral suffering on him as possible.”
“May I see the count?” Pierre repeated.
“Hmm! If you wish to kill him, to finish him completely, you may see him. Olga, go and see if the broth is ready for uncle, it will soon be time,” she added, thereby indicating to Pierre that they were busy and fully occupied with comforting his father, whereas he was obviously occupied only with causing him distress.
Olga went out. Pierre stood for a moment, looked at the sisters, bowed and said:
“Then I shall go to my room. When it is possible, you will let me know.”
He went out and heard the quiet laughter of the sister with the mole ringing behind him.
The following day Prince Vasily had arrived and installed himself in the count’s house. He summoned Pierre and told him, “My dear boy, if you behave here in the same way as in St. Petersburg, you will come to a very bad end: I have nothing more to say to you. The count is very, very ill, you should not see him at all.”
Since then no one had bothered Pierre, who, wherever he happened to be, was content with his own thoughts and walked around his room, occasionally halting in the corners, making threatening gestures at the wall, as if he were running an invisible enemy through with a sword, and peering severely over the top of his spectacles, and then recommencing his stroll, repeating inaudible words to himself, shrugging his shoulders and throwing his hands up in the air.
“England is done for!” he said, frowning and pointing at someone. “Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and the people’s law, is condemned to …” He had not yet finished pronouncing sentence on Pitt, imagining at that moment that he was Napoleon himself and having already completed, together with his beloved hero, the dangerous crossing via the Pas de Calais and conquered London, when he saw a young, well-proportioned, handsome officer entering his room. He halted. Pierre, who had seen Boris only rarely, had left him as a fourteen-year-old boy and did not remember him at all, but in spite of that, in his typical brisk and genial manner he took him by the hand and smiled amicably, displaying his bad teeth.
“Do you remember me?” asked Boris. “Maman and I came to see the count, but it seems he is not quite well.”
“Yes, it seems he is unwell. Everyone is bothering him,” replied Pierre, completely failing to notice that by saying this he appeared to be reproaching Boris and his mother.
He was trying to recall who this young man was, but Boris thought he had caught some hint in Pierre’s words.
He flushed and looked at Pierre boldly and sardonically, as much as to say: “I have nothing to be ashamed of.” Pierre could think of nothing to say.
“Count Rostov has invited you to come for dinner today,” Boris continued after a silence that was rather long and awkward for Pierre.
“Ah! Count Rostov!” Pierre said cheerfully. “So you are his son, Ilya. Can you imagine, for a moment I didn’t recognise you. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?”
“You are mistaken,” Boris said unhurriedly, with a bold and rather sardonic smile. “I am Boris, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya’s son. It is Rostov senior who is called Ilya, and his son is Nikolai. And I have never known any Madame Jacquot.”
Pierre began waving his hands and his head about as though he had been attacked by a mosquito or bees.
“Ah, this is terrible! I have confused everything. I have so many relatives in Moscow! You are Boris … yes. Right then, you and I have agreed on that. Well, what do you think of the Boulogne expedition? The English will really be in trouble if Napoleon crosses the Channel. I think an expedition is very likely. As long as Villeneuve does not blunder.”
Boris knew nothing about any Boulogne expedition, he did not read the newspapers and this was the first time he had heard of Villeneuve.
“Here in Moscow we are more concerned with dinners and gossip than politics,” he said in his calm, sardonic tone. “I know nothing about all this and have no thoughts on it. Moscow is concerned with gossip above all else,” he continued. “And what they are talking about now is you and the count.”
Pierre smiled his kind smile, as though afraid that his interlocutor might say something that he would regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly and coolly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.
“Moscow has nothing better to do than gossip,” he continued. “Everybody is concerned with whom the count will leave his fortune to, although he might perhaps outlive us all, which I wish with all my heart.”
“Yes, it is very difficult,” Pierre interjected. “Very difficult.” Pierre was still afraid that this boy-officer might inadvertently become involved in a conversation that would be embarrassing for him.
“But it must seem to you,” said Boris, blushing, but without changing his voice or pose, “it must surely seem that everybody is only concerned to get something from the rich man.”
That is how it is, thought Pierre.
“But what I wish to tell you, in order to avoid any misunderstandings, is that you would be greatly mistaken if you were to count myself and my mother among those people. We are very poor, but I, at least, speaking for myself, precisely because your father is rich, do not consider myself his relative and will never ask for anything or accept anything from him,” he concluded, growing more and more heated.
It took Pierre a long time to understand, but when he did, he leapt up off the divan, seized hold of Boris by the hand with his characteristic speed and clumsiness and, blushing far more than Boris, began speaking with a mixed feeling of shame and hurt.
“But listen … That’s very strange! How could I … And who could ever think … I know quite well …”
But Boris again interrupted him.
“I am glad I have made everything clear. Perhaps you find it disagreeable, forgive me,” he said, soothing Pierre instead of being soothed by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I make it a rule to say everything directly. What shall I tell them? Will you come to the Rostovs for dinner?”
And Boris, evidently because he had relieved himself of his onerous duty, extricating himself from one awkward situation and placing the other man in another, became cheerful and relaxed.
“Now, listen,” said Pierre, calming down. “You are an amazing person. What you said just now is fine, very fine. Of course, you do not know me, we have not seen each other for so long … we were still children … You imagine me as … but I understand, I understand you very well. I could not have done that, I would not have had the courage, but it is all fine. I am very glad to have met you again. Strange,” he added with a smile, after pausing briefly, “what you imagined me to be like!” He laughed. “Well, what of it! You and I shall get to know each other better. Please.” He shook Boris’s hand.
“You know, I have never been at the count’s house before. He has never invited me. I feel sorry for him, as a man … But what can be done?” said Boris, smiling with cheerful good-nature. “And do you think Napoleon will manage to ferry his army across?” he asked.
Pierre realised that Boris wanted to change the subject and, feeling the same way, began to expound the advantages and disadvantages of the Boulogne undertaking.
A manservant came to summon Boris to his mother, the princess. The princess was leaving. Pierre promised to come to dinner and then, in order to become closer friends with Boris, he shook his hand firmly, gazing affectionately into his eyes through his spectacles … When Boris left, Pierre continued to walk round the room for a long while, no longer running through an invisible enemy with a sword, but instead smiling at the recollection of this likeable, intelligent and resolute young man.
As happens in early youth, and especially when one is lonely, Pierre felt an irrational affection for this young man and resolved to become friends with him.
Prince Vasily was seeing off the princess. The princess was holding a handkerchief and her face was wet with tears.
“It is terrible! Terrible!” she said. “But no matter what it might cost me, I shall perform my duty. I shall come to spend the night. He cannot be left like this. Every minute is precious. I do not understand why the princesses are delaying. Perhaps God will help me find the means to prepare him! Goodbye, prince, may God give you strength …”
“Goodbye, my dear,” replied Prince Vasily, turning away from her.
“Ah, he is in a terrible state,” the mother said to her son as they were getting back into the carriage. “He hardly recognises anybody. Perhaps it will be for the best.”
“I do not understand, dear mama, what is his attitude to Pierre?” her son asked.
“The will will reveal all, my friend, our fate depends on it too …”
“But what makes you think he will leave us anything at all?”
“Ah, my friend! He is so rich and we are so poor!”
“That is still not sufficient reason, dear mama.”
“Oh, my God! My God! How pitiful he is!” exclaimed his mother.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/lev-tolstoy/war-and-peace-original-version/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
Лев Толстой
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 28.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: An alternative version – the one Tolstoy originally intended, but has been hitherto unpublished – of Russia’s most famous novel; with a different ending, fewer digressions and an altered view of Napoleon – it’s time to look afresh at one of the world’s favourite books.‘War and Peace’ is a masterpiece – a panoramic portrait of Russian society and its descent into the Napoleonic Wars which for over a century has inspired reverential devotion among its readers.This version is certain to provoke controversy and devotion in equal measures. A ‘first draft’ of the epic version known to all, it was completed in 1866 but never published. A closely guarded secret for a century and a half, the unveiling of the original version of ‘War and Peace’, with an ending different to that we all know, is of huge significance to students of Tolstoy. But it is also sure to prove fascinating to the general reader who will find it an invigorating and absorbing read. Free of the solemn philosophical wanderings, the drama and tragedy of this sweeping tale is reinforced. His characters remain central throughout, emphasising their own personal journeys, their loves and passions, their successes and failures and their own personal tragedies.500 pages shorter, this is historical fiction at its most vivid and vital, and readers will marvel anew at Tolstoy’s unique ability to conjure the lives and souls of Russia and the Russians in all their glory. For devotees who long for more, for those who struggled and didn’t quite make it to the end, or for those who have always wanted to know what all the fuss is about, this is essential reading.