‘He’s a good-hearted old fellow, but a very poor specimen.’
‘Anyway, why have they stayed on as long as this? They were meaning to leave for the country quite some time ago. Natalie is her old self now, I imagine?’ Julie asked Pierre with a devious smile.
‘They’re waiting for their younger son,’ said Pierre. ‘He joined up with Obolensky’s Cossacks, and they sent him to Belaya Tserkov. That’s where the regiment is being formed. But now they’ve had him transferred to my regiment, and he’s expected any day now. The count’s been dying to get away for ages, but nothing would induce the countess to leave Moscow till her son gets back.’
‘I saw them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs. Natalie looks pretty again and she’s in much better spirits. She sang for us. Some people get over things so easily!’
‘What kind of things?’ asked Pierre with a disgruntled look. Julie smiled at him.
‘Oh, Count, really, chivalrous knights like you don’t exist outside the pages of Madame de Souza’s novels.’
‘Chivalrous knights? What can you possibly mean?’ asked Pierre, colouring up.
‘Come now, my dear count. It’s all over Moscow. Honestly, I do admire you!’
But her last words had come out in French and they brought cries of ‘Fined again! Fined again!’ from the militiaman.
‘Oh, all right. You can’t even talk now. It’s such a bore!’
‘What’s all over Moscow?’ said Pierre getting to his feet with some resentment.
‘Oh, come on, Count, you know very well!’
‘I know absolutely nothing,’ said Pierre.
‘I know how close you’ve been to Natalie, so . . . Actually, I was always closer to Vera myself. Such a darling girl, Vera.’
‘No, madame,’ Pierre persisted, still disgruntled. ‘I have certainly not assumed the role of Countess Rostov’s knight. I haven’t been near the place for nigh on a month. How could you be so cruel? . . .’
‘I think you do protest too much,’ cried Julie with a smile, brandishing her lint. Determined to have the last word, she promptly changed the subject. ‘By the way, I’ve just heard that poor Marie Bolkonsky arrived in Moscow yesterday. You know she’s lost her father?’
‘Has she really? Where is she? I’d very much like to see her,’ said Pierre.
‘I spent yesterday evening with her. Today or tomorrow morning she’s taking her nephew down to their Moscow estate.’
‘Well, how is she? How’s she getting on?’ said Pierre.
‘Oh, she’s all right, just feeling very sad. You’ll never guess who came to her rescue! It’s so romantic. Nikolay Rostov! She was surrounded, they were trying to kill her and the servants had been wounded. He just rushed in and saved her . . .’
‘Another romance,’ said the militiaman. ‘All this running away has a clear purpose: to get all our old maids married off. There’s Katish for one, and now Princess Bolkonsky.’
‘You know what I think? She’s just a little
‘Fined again! Fined again! Fined again!’
‘But how can you say things like that in Russian?’
CHAPTER 18
When Pierre got home he was handed two new Rostopchin posters that had been brought in during the day.
The first denied the rumour that Count Rostopchin had stopped people leaving Moscow: on the contrary, he was glad to see that ladies and merchants’ wives were going. ‘Less panic and less rumour,’ said the notice, ‘but on one thing I stake my life: that scoundrel will never set foot in Moscow.’
On reading these words Pierre realized for the first time that the French were going to set foot in Moscow. The second poster announced that our headquarters were at Vyazma, and Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but also, since many Muscovites wished to arm themselves, weapons had been provided and had only to be collected from the arsenal: swords, pistols and guns were available to all citizens at cut-down prices.
The tone of this poster was noticeably less humorous than the earlier Chigirin discourses. The two posters gave Pierre pause for thought. He could now see clearly that the menacing stormcloud he had been invoking so wholeheartedly, even though he instinctively recoiled from it in horror, was now almost upon him.
‘What shall I do: join up and go out to the army, or wait here?’ Pierre asked himself for the hundredth time. He picked up a pack of cards which happened to be lying there on the table and settled down to play patience.
‘If this deal comes out,’ he told himself, holding the pack in one hand and shuffling with the other as he turned his eyes upwards, ‘if it comes out that will mean . . . what will it mean? . . .’ Before he could decide what it would mean he heard the voice of the eldest princess outside the study door, asking for permission to come in. ‘So, it will mean I’ve got to go off and join the army,’ Pierre told himself. ‘Yes, do come in,’ he said to the princess.
The eldest of his cousins, she of the long thin waist and stony face, was the only one still living in Pierre’s house, the two younger sisters having both got married.
