Pierre was exactly the husband needed by this brilliant society woman. He was that absent-minded, eccentric, grand seigneur of a husband, who got in nobody’s way and far from spoiling the general impression of the highest tone in her drawing-room, formed by his contrast with his wife’s elegance and tact an advantageous foil to her. Pierre’s continual concentration on immaterial interests during the last two years, and his genuine contempt for everything else, gave him in his wife’s circle, which did not interest him, that tone of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence towards all alike, which cannot be acquired artificially, and for that reason commands involuntary respect. He entered his wife’s drawingroom as though it were a theatre, was acquainted with every one, equally affable to all, and to all equally indifferent. Sometimes he took part in conversation on some subject that interested him, and then, without any consideration whether the ‘gentlemen of the embassy’ were present or not, he mumbled out his opinions, which were by no means always in harmony with the received catchwords of the time. But the public estimate of the eccentric husband of ‘the most distinguished woman in Petersburg’ was now so well established that no one took his sallies seriously.
Among the numerous young men, who were daily to be seen in Ellen’s house, Boris Drubetskoy, who had by now achieved marked success in
the service, was, after Ellen's return from Erfurt, the most intimate friend of the Bezuhov household. Ellen used to call him ‘mon page,’ and treated him like a child. Her smile for him was the same smile she bestowed on all, but it was sometimes distasteful to Pierre to see that smile. Boris behaved to Pierre with a marked, dignified, and mournful respectfulness. This shade of respectfulness too disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so much three years before from the mortification caused him by his wife, that now he secured himself from all possibility of similar mortification; in the first place, by being his wife’s husband only in name, and secondly, by not allowing himself to suspect anything. ‘No, now she has become a blue-stocking, she has renounced for ever her former errors,’ he said to himself. ‘There has never been an instance of a blue-stocking giving way to tender passions,’ he repeated to himself; a maxim he had picked up somewhere and implicitly believed. But, strange to say, the presence of Boris in his wife’s drawing-room (and he was almost always there) had a physical effect on Pierre; it seemed to make all his limbs contract, and destroyed the unconsciousness and freedom of his movement.
‘Such a strange antipathy,’ thought Pierre; ‘and at one time I really liked him very much.’
In the eyes of the world, Pierre was a great lord, the rather blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife; a clever eccentric, who did nothing but who was no trouble to any one, a good-natured, capital fellow. In Pierre’s soul all this while a complex and laborious process of inner development was going on that revealed much to him and led him to many spiritual doubts and joys.
X
He kept up his diary and this was what he was writing in it at that time' ‘November 24.—I got up at eight o’clock, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties’ (Pierre by the advice of Osip Alexyevitch was serving on one of the government committees), ‘came back to dinner, dined alone (the countess had a lot of guests whom I did not care for), ate and drank with moderation, and after dinner copied out passages for the brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess, and told a ridiculous story about B., and only bethought myself that I ought not to have done so, when every one was laughing loudly at it.
‘I went to bed with a calm and happy spirit. Great Lord, help me to walk in Thy paths: (1) to flee anger by gentleness and deliberation; (2) to flee lust by self-restraint and loathing, (3) to escape from the turmoil of the world without cutting myself off from (a) the duties of my political work, ( b ) the cares of my household, (c) relations with my friends, and (d) the management of my finances.’
‘November 27.—I got up late and lay a long while in bed after I was awake, giving way to sloth. My God, help me and strengthen me that I
