The old gentleman was in fine fettle after his nap before dinner. (Sleep after dinner is silver, sleep before dinner is gold, was his motto.) He aimed delighted sideways glances at his son from beneath his thick bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrey walked forward and kissed his father on the appointed spot. He avoided any comment on his father’s hobby horse – joking about today’s military men and especially Bonaparte.
‘Yes, I have come to you, Father, with a wife who is pregnant,’ said Prince Andrey, his lively, respectful eyes following every movement of his father’s face. ‘How are you keeping?’
‘It’s only fools and libertines that fall ill, my boy, and you know me – busy from dawn to dusk and I don’t indulge. Of course I’m well.’ ‘Thank God for that,’ said his son with a smile.
‘God doesn’t come into it. Come on then, start telling me,’ the old man continued, back on his favourite topic, ‘what have the Germans taught you about fighting Bonaparte with this new scientific stuff – strategy, or whatever they call it?’
Prince Andrey smiled.
‘Give me a minute to recover, Father,’ he said, with a smile which showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his respecting and loving him. ‘I haven’t even been to my room yet.’
‘Nonsense, my boy,’ cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to make sure it was properly plaited, and taking his son by the hand. ‘The house is ready for your wife. Marie will take her around and show her everything, and they’ll talk the hind leg off a donkey. That’s the way with women. I’m pleased she’s come. So, sit down and talk to me. I know about Mikhelson’s army, and Tolstoy’s43 . . . simultaneous attacks . . . But what’s the Southern Army going to be doing? Then there’s Prussia, she’s neutral . . . I know about that. What about Austria?’ he asked, getting up from his chair and pacing up and down the room, with Tikhon trotting at his heels, handing him various articles of clothing. ‘And Sweden? And how will they get through Pomerania?’
After listening to question after question put so insistently by his father, Prince Andrey started to outline the plan of operations of the proposed campaign. Reluctant at first, he soon became more and more enthusiastic, and as he spoke he followed his usual habit of alternating between Russian and French. He told him an army of ninety thousand was to threaten Prussia in order to bring her out of neutrality and into the war, some of these men were to join with the Swedes at Stralsund, two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians would combine with a hundred thousand Russians in Italy and on the Rhine, fifty thousand Russians and fifty thousand English were to land at Naples, and the entire half-a-million-strong army would then attack the French on several different fronts. The old prince showed no sign of interest in what he was saying – he seemed not to be listening – and he carried on getting dressed as he walked up and down, but he did make three sudden interruptions.
Once he stopped and shouted, ‘The white one! The white one!’, meaning that Tikhon had handed him the wrong waistcoat.
Another time he stopped and asked, ‘When is she due?’, shaking his head reproachfully: ‘Hmm . . . Too bad! Well, get on with it.’
The third time was when Prince Andrey was coming towards the end of his story. Suddenly the old man’s wobbly falsetto sang out the French song, ‘Marlborough is off to war, God knows when we’ll see him . . .’44 His son merely smiled.
‘I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,’ he said. ‘I’m just telling you how things are. Napoleon has his own plan and it’s no worse than ours.’
‘Well, you’ve told me nothing new.’
Pensively the old man gabbled to himself, ‘ “God knows when we’ll see him . . .” Go on into dinner.’
CHAPTER 24
Exactly on time, the prince, well powdered and clean-shaven, strode into the dining-room, to be welcomed by his daughter-in-law, Princess Marya, Mademoiselle Bourienne and the prince’s architect, who was allowed to dine with them by some strange whim of the master, even though such an unimportant person of no significant status was hardly entitled to such an honour. Normally a stickler for social distinctions, the prince was loath to admit to his table even important local dignitaries, but he had suddenly lighted on the architect Mikhail Ivanovich, who had a habit of going into a corner to blow his nose into a checked handkerchief, as living proof that all men are equal, and had repeatedly impressed on his daughter that Mikhail Ivanovich was by no means an inferior. At meals the prince spent most of his time talking to the architect, who never said anything back.
