‘Yes, he is very handsome,’ thought Pierre, ‘and I know him. There would be a particular charm for him in disgracing my name and turning me into ridicule, just because I have exerted myself in his behalf, have befriended him and helped him. I know, I understand what zest that would be sure to give to his betrayal of me, if it were true. Yes, if it were true, but I don’t believe it. I have no right to and I can’t believe it.’ He recalled the expression on Dolohov’s face in his moments of cruelty, such as when he was tying the police officer on to the bear and dropping him into the water, or when he had utterly without provocation challenged a man to a duel or killed a sledge-driver’s horse with a shot from his pistol. That expression often came into Dolohov’s face when he was looking at him. ‘Yes, he’s a duelling bully,’ thought Pierre; ‘to him it means nothing to kill a man, it must seem to him that every one’s afraid of him. He must like it. He must think I am afraid of him. And, in fact, I really am afraid of him,’ Pierre mused; and again at these thoughts he felt as though something terrible and hideous were rising up in his soul. Dolohov, Denisov, and Rostov were sitting facing Pierre and seemed to be greatly enjoying themselves. Rostov talked away merrily to his two friends, of whom one was a dashing hussar, the other a notorious duellist and scapegrace, and now and then cast ironical glances at Pierre, whose appearance at the dinner was a striking one, with his preoccupied, absent- minded, massive figure. Rostov looked with disfavour upon Pierre. In the first place, because Pierre, in the eyes of the smart hussar, was a rich civilian, and husband of a beauty, was altogether, in fact, an old woman, And secondly, because Pierre in his preoccupation and absent-mindedness had not recognised Rostov and had failed to respond to his bow. When they got up to drink the health of the Tsar, Pierre, plunged in thought, did not rise nor take up his glass.
‘What are you about?’ Rostov shouted to him, looking at him with enthusiastic and exasperated eyes. ‘Don’t you hear: the health of our sovereign the Emperor!’
Pierre with a sigh obeyed, got up, emptied his glass, and waiting till all were seated again, he turned with his kindly smile to Rostov. ‘Why, I didn’t recognise you,’ he said. But Rostov had no thoughts for him, he was shouting ‘Hurrah!’
‘Why don’t you renew' the acquaintance?’ said Dolohov to Rostov.
‘Oh, bother him, he’s a fool,’ said Rostov.
‘One has to be sweet to the husbands of pretty women,’ said Denisov. Pierre did not hear what they were saying, but he knew they were talking of him. He flushed and turned away. ‘Well, now to the health of pretty women,’ said Dolohov, and with a serious expression, though a smile lurked in the corners of his mouth, he turned to Pierre.
‘To the health of pretty women, Petrusha, and their lovers too,’ he said.
Pierre, with downcast eyes, sipped his glass, without looking at Dolohov or answering him. The footman, distributing copies of Kutuzov’s cantata, laid a copy by Pierre, as one of the more honoured guests. He would have taken it, but Dolohov bent forward, snatched the paper out of his hands and began reading it. Pierre glanced at Dolohov, and his eyes dropped; something terrible and hideous, that had been torturing him all through the dinner, rose up and took possession of him. He bent the whole of his ungainly person across the table. ‘Don’t you dare to take it! ’ he shouted.
Hearing that shout and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitsky and his neighbour on the right side turned in haste and alarm to Bezuhov.
‘Hush, hush, what are you about?’ whispered panic-stricken voices, Dolohov looked at Pierre with his clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, still with the same smile, as though he were saying: ‘Come now, this is what I like.'
‘I won’t give it up,’ he said distinctly.
Pale and with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.
‘You . . . you . . . blackguard! ... I challenge you,’ he said, and moving back his chair, he got up from the table. At the second Pierre did this and uttered these words he felt that the question of his wife’s guilt, that had been torturing him for the last four and twenty hours, was finally and incontestably answered in the affirmative. He hated her and ■was severed from her for ever. In spite of Denisov’s entreaties that Rostov would have nothing to do with the affair, Rostov agreed to be Dolohov’s second, and after dinner he discussed with Nesvitsky, Bezuhov’s second, the arrangements for the duel. Pierre had gone home, but Rostov with Dolohov and Denisov stayed on at the club listening to the gypsies and the singers till late in the evening.
‘So good-bye till to-morrow, at Sokolniky,’ said Dolohov, as he parted from Rostov at the club steps.
‘And do you feel quite calm?’ asked Rostov.
Dolohov stopped.
