Returning home from his travels, Prince Andrey decided he would go to Petersburg in the autumn, and he began dreaming up all sorts of reasons to justify the decision. A string of sensible, logical excuses for visiting the city, and even re-entering the service, was always at hand. Now, in fact, he could not begin to understand how he could ever have doubted the necessity of leading an active life, whereas a month before he would not have believed that the idea of ever leaving the country might occur to him. It now seemed absolutely clear that all his life experience would count for nothing if he failed to make practical use of it by starting to lead an active life again. He could not understand how such weak arguments could once have convinced him that he would be debasing himself if, after all he had learnt about life, he were to carry on believing in the possibility of doing something useful and the possibility of happiness and of love. Reason now spoke otherwise. After his journey to Ryazan Prince Andrey found country life tedious. His former interests had lost their appeal, and when he sat alone in his study he would often get to his feet, go over to the mirror and stare at his own face for minutes on end. Then he would turn to the portrait of Liza, looking out at him so sweetly and happily from her gilt frame with her Grecian hairstyle. Now, instead of saying those terrible words to her husband, she just looked at him with cheerful curiosity. Then he would clasp his hands behind his back and spend long minutes pacing up and down the room, frowning one moment and smiling the next, brooding on a series of strange ideas that lay beyond words, as secret as a hidden crime, ideas connected with Pierre, glory, the girl at the window, the oak-tree, the beauty of women, love – all the things that had changed the course of his life. And at moments like this if anyone came into his room his manner would be particularly abrupt, harsh, decisive, logical to a fault.
‘Listen, my dear,’ Princess Marya might say, coming in at just such a time, ‘Little Nikolay can’t go out for a walk today. It’s too cold.’
‘If it happened to be hot,’ Andrey’s tart response would be on such occasions, ‘he would go out in his smock, but since it is cold you must dress him in warm clothing designed for that purpose. That’s what happens when it’s cold, not staying indoors when the child needs some fresh air.’ He would pronounce all this with an exaggerated sense of logic, as if he needed to resolve his own inner illogicalities by secretly taking them out on someone else.
It was at times like this that Princess Marya thought how desiccated men’s minds become with all that intellectual activity.
CHAPTER 4
Prince Andrey arrived in Petersburg in August 1809. This was the time when the young Speransky1 was at the peak of his fame and his reforms were being carried through with the utmost vigour. It was in August that the Tsar was thrown out of his carriage, injured his leg and was laid up for three weeks at Peterhof, seeing Speransky and no one but Speransky every day. At that time the two famous decrees were being drafted – abolishing court ranks and making entry to two Civil Service grades (collegiate assessor and state councillor) dependent on examinations – and everyone was worried about them. Beyond that, the country’s entire constitution was under review, with plans for radical reform of all government systems, legal, administrative and financial, from the State Council down to the district tribunals. Alexander had come to the throne with his head full of sketchy liberalism but now his dreams were taking shape and coming into practice. So far his efforts to implement them had been assisted by Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey and Stroganov, a group of men that he jokingly referred to as his ‘Public Welfare Committee’. They had recently been replaced at a stroke by two men: Speransky on the civilian side and Arakcheyev in charge of the military.
Soon after his arrival Prince Andrey, as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a levée. The Tsar met him on two occasions, but didn’t favour him with a single word. Prince Andrey had long suspected that the Tsar had taken against him and disliked the look of him and his whole personality. The Tsar’s look of cold aloofness bore out Prince Andrey’s worst suspicions. Courtiers explained the Tsar’s cold shoulder by saying that his Majesty was displeased at Bolkonsky’s absence from active service since 1805.
