All Moscow knew the Rostovs. The old count was not without money that year after remortgaging all of his estates, and this made it possible for dear little Nikolay, who kept his own racehorse and wore the very latest riding breeches – a new style as yet unseen in Moscow – and the most fashionable boots with very pointed toes and tiny silver spurs, to enjoy himself. It didn’t take long for Rostov, once back, to resume the old ways and feel good. He now considered himself grown up, a real man. The despair he had once felt when he had failed a Divinity examination, the times he had borrowed money from Gavrilo to pay his sledge-drivers, those stolen kisses with Sonya – he looked back on it all as childish nonsense belonging to the infinitely distant past. Now look at him – a lieutenant of hussars with silver braid on his jacket and a St George’s Cross, owner of a horse in training for a race and on familiar terms with well-known men of the track, elderly and respected persons. He had also taken up with a certain lady living on the boulevard whom he visited of an evening. He had led the mazurka at the Arkharovs’ ball,3 discussed the war with Field-Marshal Kamensky, become a regular at the English Club and was on intimate terms with a forty-year-old colonel whom he had met through Denisov.
His passion for the Tsar had cooled a little in Moscow as time went by and he never saw him. But he never stopped talking about the Emperor and his love for him, always with an implication that he was holding something back, that his own feeling for the Emperor had something about it that was beyond most people, though he joined wholeheartedly in the general feeling of adoration for Emperor Alexander, who had been dubbed ‘the angel incarnate’ by Moscow society of the day.
During this brief interlude in Moscow before returning to the army, far from growing closer to Sonya, he broke with her. She was very pretty and charming, and it was obvious that she was passionately in love with him. But he was at that stage of a young man’s life when he thinks he is too busy for that sort of thing and he is reluctant to tie himself down because freedom is so precious and necessary when there is so much to be done. Whenever he thought about Sonya during this stay in Moscow, he said to himself, ‘Oh dear, there are plenty more fish in the sea, so many girls like her waiting somewhere for me to meet them. There’s plenty of time for me to think about falling in love when I feel like it, but I’m too busy just now.’ He also began to consider that female company somehow undermined his masculinity. Whenever he went to a ball, knowing he was going to be with the ladies, he did so with a great show of reluctance. The races, the English Club, nights out with Denisov and
At the beginning of March old Count Ilya Rostov set himself the demanding task of arranging a dinner at the English Club in honour of Prince Bagration.
The count would parade up and down the big hall in his dressing-gown, giving instructions to the chief bursar and to Feoktist, the renowned head chef, concerning the asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal and fish on the menu for Prince Bagration’s dinner. The count was both founder-member and doyen of the club. He had been entrusted with the organization of the Bagration banquet because it would have been difficult to find anyone more capable of organizing a dinner on such a grand and lavish scale, let alone anyone more able and willing to put in some money of his own, should the organization require it. The chef and the bursar listened to the count’s orders with humorous indulgence written all over their faces, because they knew that he was the best man around for throwing a dinner costing thousands from which good money could be made on the side.
‘Oh yes, croutons, we must have croutons in the turtle soup.’
‘How many cold dishes – three, I suppose? . . .’ queried the chef.
The count thought this over.
‘Yes, there’ll have to be three . . . Number one – mayonnaise,’ he said, counting on a crooked finger.
‘And did you decide on the large sturgeon?’ asked the bursar.
‘Yes, it can’t be helped. We’ll have to have them even if they won’t bring the prices down. Good gracious, I nearly forgot. We must have another entrée. My godfathers!’ He clutched at his head. ‘Who’s going to get the flowers for me? Mitenka! Where’s Mitenka! Oh, there you are. What I want you to do,’ he said to the steward, who was quick to respond to his call, ‘is get down to my country place as fast as you can,’ (it was just outside the city) ‘and tell Maksimka the gardener to organize some serf labour. Tell him to empty the conservatories and send everything here, packed in felt. Two hundred pots, and I want them here by Friday.’
