“Thank God!’ he said. ‘My wife has told me all about it.’ He put one arm round Pierre, the other round his daughter. ‘My dear boy! Ellen! I am very, very glad.’ His voice quavered. ‘I loved your father . . . and she will make you a good wife . . . God’s blessing on you! . . .’ He embraced his daughter, then Pierre again, and kissed him with his elderly lips. Tears were actually moist on his cheeks. ‘Aline, come here,’ he called.
The princess went in and wept too. The elderly lady also put her handkerchief to her eye. They kissed Pierre, and he several times kissed the hand of the lovely Ellen. A little later they were again left alone.
‘All this had to be so and could not have been otherwise,’ thought Pierre, ‘so that it’s no use to inquire whether it was a good thing or not. It’s a good thing because it’s definite, and there’s none of the agonising suspense there was before.’ Pierre held his betrothed’s hand in silence, and gazed at the heaving and falling of her lovely bosom.
‘Ellen!’ he said aloud, and stopped. ‘There’s something special is said on these occasions,’ he thought; but he could not recollect precisely what it was that was said on these occasions. He glanced into her face. She bent forward closer to him. Her face flushed rosy red.
‘Ah, take off those . . . those . . .’ she pointed to his spectacles.
Pierre took off his spectacles, and there was in his eyes besides the strange look people’s eyes always have when they remove spectacles, a look of dismay and inquiry. He would have bent over her hand and have kissed it. But with an almost brutal movement of her head, she caught it his lips and pressed them to her own. Pierre was struck by the transformed, the unpleasantly confused expression of her face.
‘Now it’s too late, it’s all over, and besides I love her,’ thought Pierre.
‘I love you!’ he said, remembering what had to be said on these iccasions. But the words sounded so poor that he felt ashamed of limself.
Six weeks later he was married, and the lucky possessor of a lovely
xg6 WAR AND PEACE
wife and millions of money, as people said; he took up his abode in the
great, newly decorated Petersburg mansion of the Counts Bezuhov.
Ill
In the December of 1805, the old Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky received a letter from Prince Vassily, announcing that he intended to visit him with his son. (‘I am going on an inspection tour, and of course a hundred versts is only a step out of the way for me to visit you, my deeply-honoured benefactor,’ he wrote. ‘My Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, and I hope you will permit him to express to you in person the profound veneration that, following his father’s example, he entertairts for you.’)
‘Well, there’s no need to bring Marie out, it seems; suitors come to us of themselves,’ the little princess said heedlessly on hearing of this. Prince Nikolay Andreitch scowled and said nothing.
A fortnight after receiving the letter, Prince Vassily’s servants arrived one evening in advance of him, and the following day he came himself with his son.
Old Bolkonsky had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vassily’s character, and this opinion had grown stronger of late since Prince Vassily had, under the new reigns of Paul and Alexander, advanced to high rank and honours. Now from the letter and the little princess’s hints, he saw what the object of the visit was, and his poor opinion of Prince Vassily passed into a feeling of ill-will and contempt in the old prince’s heart. He snorted indignantly whenever he spoke of him. On the day of Prince Vassily’s arrival, the old prince was particularly discontented and out of humour. Whether he was out of humour because Prince Vassily was coming, or whether he was particularly displeased at Prince Vassily’s coming because he was out of humour, no one can say. But he was out of humour, and early in the morning Tihon had dissuaded the architect from going to the prince with his report.
‘Listen how he’s walking,’ said Tihon, calling the attention of the architect to the sound of the prince’s footsteps. ‘Stepping flat on his heels . . . then we know . . .’
At nine o’clock, however, the old prince went out for a walk, as usual, wearing his short, velvet, fur-lined cloak with a sable collar and a sable cap. There had been a fall of snow on the previous evening. The path along which Prince Nikolay Andreitch walked to the conservatory hadj been cleared; there were marks of a broom in the swept snow, and a spade: had been left sticking in the crisp bank of snow that bordered the path on both sides. The prince walked through the conservatories, the servants’ quarters, and the out-buildings, frowning and silent.
‘Could a sledge drive up?’ he asked the respectful steward, who was : escorting him to the house, with a countenance and manners like his own;
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‘The snow is deep, your excellency. I gave orders for the avenue to be swept too.’
