‘But she’s stupid, I used to say myself that she was stupid,’ he thought. ‘There is something nasty in the feeling she excites in me, something not legitimate. I have been told that her brother, Anatole, was in love with her, and she in love with him, that there was a regular scandal, and that’s why Anatole was sent away. Her brother is Ippolit. . . . Her father is Prince Vassily. . . . That’s bad,’ he mused; and at the very moment that he was reflecting thus (the reflections were not followed out to the end) he caught himself smiling, and became conscious that another series of reflections had risen to the surface across the first, that he was at the same time meditating on her worthlessness, and dreaming of how she would be his wife, how she might love him, how she might become quite different, and how all he had thought and heard about her might be untrue. And again he saw her, not as the daughter of Prince Vassily, but saw her whole body, only veiled by her grey gowm. ‘But, no, why didn’t that idea ever occur to me before?’ And again he told himself that it was impossible, that there would be something nasty, unnatural, as it seemed to him, and dishonourable in this marriage. He recalled her past words and looks, and the words and looks of people, who had seen them together. He remembered the words and looks of Anna Pavlovna, when she had spoken about his house, he recollected thousands of such hints from Prince Vassily and other people, and he was overwhelmed with terror that he might have bound himself in some way to do a thing obviously wrong, and not what he ought to do. But at the very time that he was expressing this to himself, in another part of his mind her image floated to the surface in all its womanly beauty.
II
In the November of 1805 Prince Vassily was obliged to go on a tour >f inspection through four provinces. He had secured this appointment or himself, in order to be able at the same time to visit his estates, which yere in a neglected state. He intended to pick up his son, Anatole, on the* way (where his regiment was stationed), and to pay a visit to Prince Nikolay Andreivitch Bolkonsky, with a view to marrying his son to the I'ich old man’s daughter. But before going away and entering on these jew affairs, Prince Vassily wanted to settle matters with Pierre, who ad, it was true, of late spent whole days at home, that is, at Prince assily’s, where he was staying, and was as absurd, as agitated, and as tupid in Ellen’s presence, as a young man in love should be, but still ;iade no offer.
‘This is all very fine, but the thing must come to a conclusion,’ Prince
iqo WAR AND PEACE
Vassily said to himself one morning, with a melancholy sigh, recognising that Pierre, who was so greatly indebted to him (But there! God bless the fellow!), was not behaving quite nicely to him in the matter. ‘Youth . . . frivolity . . . well, God be with him,’ thought Prince Vassily, enjoying the sense of his own goodness of heart, ‘but the thing must come to a conclusion. The day after to-morrow is Ellen’s name-day, I’ll invite some people, and if he doesn’t understand what he’s to do, then it will be my affair to see to it. Yes, my affair. I’m her father.’
