After Prince Andrey’s engagement to Natasha it dawned on Pierre, suddenly and for no obvious reason, that he couldn’t possibly go on living as before. For all his staunch belief in the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, the old freemason, and the pleasure he had taken at first in striving so ardently towards the perfection of his inner self, after Prince Andrey’s engagement to Natasha and the death of Osip Bazdeyev, news of which had reached him at almost exactly the same time, all the zest suddenly went out of that earlier way of living. He was left with nothing but the skeleton of a life: his house with his brilliant wife, now enjoying the favours of a very important person, entrée to all levels of Petersburg society and service at court with all its tiresome formalities. And now suddenly Pierre was shocked by the degree of disgust that he felt for that former life. He stopped keeping a diary, shunned the society of his brother-masons and went back to his old club, drinking too much, consorting with the bachelor set and adopting the kind of life-style that made Countess Hélène feel obliged to take him to task on the subject. Pierre felt she had right on her side, so he went down to Moscow to avoid compromising her.
Once in Moscow, the moment he set foot in his vast house with the faded and fading princesses and the hordes of servants, the moment he drove through the town and caught his first glimpse of the Iversky chapel with the lights of innumerable candles glinting and reflecting in the silver icon-covers and the Kremlin Square with its deep covering of untrodden snow, the sledge-drivers, the shanties of the Sivtsev Vrazhok slums, the old gentlemen of Moscow in the twilight of their lives, unhurried and set in their ways, and also the old ladies of Moscow, the Moscow ballrooms and the English Club – he felt he had come back home to a haven of peace. In Moscow he felt warm and welcome, comfortable and scruffy. It was like putting an old dressing-gown.
All Moscow society, from the old ladies to the children, welcomed Pierre back like a long-awaited guest, whose place had always lain ready for him, never occupied by anyone else. In the eyes of Moscow society, Pierre was the nicest and kindest of men, the brightest and jolliest, the most generous of eccentrics, a hare-brained and warm-hearted Russian gentleman of the old school. His purse was for ever empty, being open to all.
Benefit performances, awful paintings and statues, charities, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, drinking parties, the masons, churches, book-publishing – everyone and everything met with his support, and had it not been for two of his friends, who had borrowed heavily from Pierre and set themselves up as his guardians, he would have given away his last kopeck. Not a single party or dinner took place at the club without him being there.
Once seen sprawling in his usual place on the sofa after a couple of bottles of Margaux he would be surrounded by a circle of friends and become the centre of all discussions, disputes and jokes. When people fell out, a friendly smile or a well-chosen
When he got to his feet after a bachelor supper and yielded with a sweet smile to the entreaties of the revellers to drive off with them somewhere, the young men would raise the roof with yells of delight and triumph. In the ballroom he would dance if a partner was needed. He appealed to both young girls and the younger married ladies because he didn’t flirt and was nice to everyone in just the same way, especially after supper. ‘He’s a delightful man with no sex,’ they used to say of him (always in French).
This was Pierre – one among hundreds of retired gentlemen-in-waiting peaceably living out their days in Moscow. What horror he would have felt if he had been told on his return from abroad seven years ago that there was no point in searching or taxing his brains because the way forward was set for him, marked out in advance for all eternity, and it was no use fighting against it because he was bound to turn out exactly like every other man in his position. He wouldn’t have believed it. Had he not put his heart and soul into so many things – setting up a republic in Russia, turning himself into another Napoleon, or a philosopher, or a master strategist capable of defeating Napoleon? Had he not considered it possible and highly desirable to work for the regeneration of sinful humanity and bring himself to the highest degree of perfection? Had he not gone about founding schools and hospitals and liberating his serfs?
