War And Peace полностью

His efforts had not been in vain. For everyone there, observers of Lent or otherwise, the banquet was magnificent, but he would not be able to relax until it was all over. He winked messages to the carver, whispered instructions to the waiters and awaited the serving of each familiar dish with trepidation. Everything went splendidly. During the second course, which involved the colossal sturgeon (the sight of which brought a blush of self-conscious delight to his face), the footman began popping corks and pouring champagne. After the somewhat sensational fish, Rostov exchanged glances with the other senior members. ‘There’ll be a lot of toasts. It’s time to begin!’ he whispered, and rose, glass in hand. Silence fell. What would he say?

‘I give you our Sovereign, the Emperor!’ he shouted, his kindly eyes watering with tears of sheer delight. At that instant the band struck up with, ‘Hail the victor! Loud the anthem!’ and they all got to their feet and roared ‘Hurrah!’ And Bagration shouted ‘Hurrah!’ just as he had done on the field at Schöngrabern. The eager voice of the young Rostov rang out above three hundred others. He was on the verge of tears. ‘Our Sovereign, the Emperor,’ he roared. ‘Hurrah!’ Downing his drink in one, he hurled the glass to the floor. Many followed his example. And the raucous cheering seemed as if it would never end. When the uproar subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass, and the diners resumed their places, amused at the racket they had made, and the talking began again. Count Rostov soon rose to his feet once more with a quick glance at a note beside his plate, and proposed a toast to the hero of our last campaign, Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration, and again his blue eyes were watering with tears. ‘Hurrah!’ rang out again from three hundred throats, and this time instead of the band playing, a small choir launched into a setting of some verses written by Pavel Ivanovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov:⁵

Onward Russians, never yield!

Be ye brave and win the prize!

Give Bagratión the field,

See the foeman as he dies . . .

The choir stopped singing, more and more toasts followed, Count Rostov senior became more and more emotional, more glass was shattered and a lot more noise was made. They toasted Bekleshov, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuyev, the senior members, the club committee, all the members and their guests, and then finally a special toast was drunk to the organizer of the banquet, Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov. This toast was too much for the count, who took out his handkerchief, buried his face in it and broke into floods of tears.

CHAPTER 4

Pierre was sitting opposite Dolokhov and Nikolay Rostov. As always, he ate greedily and drank a lot. But those close to him could see that a great change had come over him that day. He sat through dinner without saying a word to anyone, glancing around with a scowl and a frown or staring vaguely into empty air while he rubbed the bridge of his nose with one finger. He looked thoroughly depressed and gloomy and seemed to see or hear nothing of what was going on around him. Something was worrying him, something serious that he would have to attend to.

What worried him was a series of hints dropped by the princess in Moscow about Dolokhov being rather too close to his wife, and also an anonymous letter which he had received that morning. Written in that despicable tone of forced humour common to all anonymous letters, it had said that he couldn’t see the nose in front of his face even with his glasses on and that his wife’s liaison with Dolokhov was an open secret for everybody except him. Pierre refused categorically to believe either the princess’s hints or the anonymous letter, but he was now scared to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite. Every time his glance happened to encounter Dolokhov’s handsome and challenging eyes Pierre could feel something terrible and disgusting rising up in his soul, and he was quick to look away. He couldn’t help running over his wife’s past history and her attitude to Dolokhov, and he could see that what was said in the letter might have been true, or might seem to be true, if only it had related to someone else, not his wife. Pierre remembered how Dolokhov had returned to Petersburg fully reinstated as an officer following the campaign, and come to see him. Taking advantage of a friendship with Pierre which went back to their days of riotous living, Dolokhov simply moved in, and Pierre had set him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled Hélène’s smile as she complained about Dolokhov living with them, and Dolokhov’s cynical look as he had praised his wife’s beauty to him. Since that time he had never left their side, and that included coming down to Moscow.