War And Peace полностью

That winter the Karagins’ house was one of the most open and welcoming in Moscow. Besides all the invitation-only dinner-parties and soirées, people gathered in large numbers at the Karagins’ every day of the week, especially men, who took supper at midnight and stayed on till three in the morning. Julie never missed anything to do with the ballroom, the theatre or strolling in public. She dressed in the latest fashion. But in spite of everything, Julie was a picture of disillusionment, telling everyone she had lost all faith in love or friendship, or any of the joys of the here and now, and she looked only for the consolation to come – up there. She had adopted the tone of a girl who has suffered a great disappointment, a girl who has lost her lover or been cruelly deceived by him. Although nothing remotely like that had ever happened to her, she was looked upon as if it had, and it was her own firm belief that she had suffered a great deal in life. This melancholy never stopped her enjoying herself and never stopped young men enjoying themselves in her company. Every visiting guest took great care to acknowledge the melancholic state of mind that afflicted the hostess, and then went straight off to enjoy himself in society chit-chat, dancing, clever games, or a session of bouts rimés, which was all the rage at the Karagins’. There were only one or two young men, and they included Boris, who dipped below the surface of Julie’s melancholy, and with these young men she held longer conversations in more secluded places on the vanity of everything in this world, and they were also privy to her albums, page after page of doleful sketches, sayings and poetry.

Julie was so sweet with Boris, sympathizing with his premature alienation from life, offering him what consolation she could as a good friend, she having suffered so much in her own life, and she opened up one of her albums for him. Boris drew a little sketch of two trees, and wrote underneath, ‘O rustic trees, your sombre branches shed upon me darkness and melancholy.’

On another page he did a drawing of a tomb and inscribed below it:

Our strength and stay is death; death brings us peace tomorrow.

Ah me, no other power can shelter us from sorrow!

Julie thought this exquisite.

‘There is something so delightful in a smile of melancholy,’ she said to Boris, quoting verbatim from a book. ‘It is a ray of light in the shadows, a subtle margin between sorrow and despair, demonstrating the possibility of consolation.’

Boris responded with the following verses in French:

O poisoned fare by which my feeling soul is nourished,

Thou single stay on which my happiness has flourished,

Sweet melancholy, come to comfort and console,

To calm the storms of my darkness and isolation

And blend your hidden consolation

With these my tears I cannot control.

Julie would go to her harp and play Boris the most plangent nocturnes. Boris would read aloud to her, more than once breaking down half-way through Karamzin’s romantic story, Poor Liza, choking with emotion and unable to continue. When they met in society Julie and Boris would exchange lingering glances as though they were the only real people hailing each other in sympathy across a sea of indifference.

Anna Mikhaylovna, a frequent visitor, would play cards with Julie’s mother and use every opportunity to gather all reliable information about Julie’s expectations if she were to marry. (Her dowry would consist of two Penza estates and a large forested region near Nizhny Novgorod.) It was with deep emotion and complete resignation to the workings of Providence that Anna Mikhaylovna followed the exquisite sharing of sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie.

‘As charming and melancholic as ever, my dear sweet Julie,’ she would say to the daughter. And to the mother, ‘Boris tells me that here in your house he finds respite for his soul. He has been the victim of so many disappointments, and he’s such a sensitive boy.’

‘Oh, Boris dear, I have become so attached to Julie recently,’ she would say to her son. ‘I can’t begin to tell you. But then, who could help loving her! A creature not of this world! Oh, Boris! Boris!’ She would pause before going on. ‘And I’m so sorry for her mamma,’ she would then say. ‘Only today she was showing me letters and accounts from Penza (they have a huge estate there), and, poor thing, she’s all on her own. They all take advantage of her!’

Boris heard what his mother had to say with the ghost of a smile. He laughed lightly at her simple-minded scheming, but he did listen closely when she spoke about the Penza and Nizhny Novgorod estates, and sometimes followed up with penetrating questions.