War and peace ( Constance Garnett-1900) полностью

Sonya was depressed at parting from Nikolay, and still more at thi hostile tone the countess could not help adopting towards her. The conn was more worried than ever by the difficulties of his position, which callei for some decisive action. It was necessary to sell the Moscow house am the estate near Moscow, and to do so it was necessary to go to Moscow But the countess’s illness forced them to put off going from day to day Natasha, who had at first borne the separation from her betrothed s

PART VIII

I

After Prince Andrey’s engagement to Natasha, Pierre suddenly, for no apparent reason, felt it impossible to go on living in the same way as before. Firm as his belief was in the truths revealed to him by his benefactor, the old freemason, and happy as he had been at first in the task of perfecting his inner spiritual self, to which he had devoted himself with such ardour, yet after Prince Andrey’s engagement to Natasha, and the death of Osip Alexyevitch, the news of which reached him almost simultaneously, the whole zest of his religious life seemed to have suddenly vanished. Nothing but the skeleton of life remained: his house with his brilliant wife, now basking in the favours of a very grand personage in- : deed, the society of all Petersburg, and his service at court with its tedious formalities. And that life suddenly filled Pierre with unexpected loathing. He gave up keeping his diary, avoided the society of brother- masons, took to visiting the club again and to drinking a great deal; associated once more with gay bachelor companions, and began to

I lead a life so dissipated that Countess Elena Vassilyevna thought it necessary to make severe observations to him on the subject. Pierre felt that she was right; and to avoid compromising his wife, he went away to Moscow.

In Moscow, as soon as he entered his huge house with the faded and fading princesses, his cousins, and the immense retinue of servants, as . soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iversky chapel with the lights of innumerable candles before the golden setting of the Madonna, the square of the Kremlin with its untrodden snow, the sledge-drivers, and the hovels of Sivtsev Vrazhok; saw the old Moscow gentlemen quietly going on with their daily round, without hurry or desire of change; f saw the old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls, and the English Club— he felt himself at home, in a quiet haven of rest. In Moscow he felt com- j| fortable, warm, at home, and snugly dirty, as in an old dressing-gown, All Moscow society, from the old ladies to the children, welcomed Pierre back like a long-expected guest, whose place was always ready for him, and had never been filled up. For the Moscow world, Pierre was the most delightful, kind-hearted, intellectual, good-humoured, and generous eccentric, and a heedless and genial Russian gentleman of the good old school. His purse was always empty, because it was always open to every one.

Benefit-entertainments, poor pictures and statues, benevolent societies, gypsy choruses, schools, subscription dinners, drinking parties, the

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masons, churches, and books—no one and nothing ever met with a refusal, and had it not been for two friends, who had borrowed large sums of money from Pierre and constituted themselves guardians of a sort over him, he would have parted with everything. Not a dinner, not a soiree took place at the club without him.

As soon as he was lolling in his place on the sofa, after a couple of bottles of margot, he was surrounded by a circle of friends, and arguments, disputes, and jokes sprang up round him. Where there were quarrels, his kindly smile and casually uttered jokes were enough to reconcile the antagonists. The masonic dining lodges were dull and dreary when he was absent.

W T hen after a bachelor supper, with a weak and good-natured smile, he yielded to the entreaties of the festive party that he would drive off with them to share their revels, there were shouts of delight and triumph. At balls he danced if there were a lack of partners. Girls and young married ladies liked him, because he paid no special attention to any one, but was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. ‘He is charming; he is of no sex,’ they used to say of him.

Pierre was just a kammerherr, retired to end his days in Moscow, like hundreds of others. How horrified he would have been if, seven years before, when he had just come home from abroad, any one had told him that there was no need for him to look about him and rack his brains, that the track had long ago been trodden, marked out from all eternity for him, and that, struggle as he would, he would be just such another as all men in his position. He could not have believed it then! Had he not longed with his whole heart to establish a republic in Russia; then to be himself a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a great strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not passionately desired and believed in the regeneration of the sinful race of man and the schooling of himself to the highest point of perfect virtue? Plad he not founded schools and hospitals and liberated his serfs?

But instead of all that, here he was the wealthy husband of a faithless wife, a retired kammerherr, fond of dining and drinking, fond, too, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat after dinner, of indulging in a little abuse of the government, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal favourite in Moscow society. For a long while he could not reconcile himself to the idea that he was precisely the retired Moscow kammerherr, the very type he had so profoundly, scorned seven years before.

Sometimes he consoled himself by the reflection that it did not count, that he was only temporarily leading this life. But later on he was horrified by another reflection, that numbers of other men, with the same idea of its being temporary, had entered that life and that club with all their teeth and a thick head of hair, only to leave it when they were toothless and bald.

In moments of pride, when he was reviewing his position, it seemed to him that he was quite different, distinguished in some way from the

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retired kammerherrs he had looked upon with contempt in the past; that they were vulgar and stupid, at ease and satisfied with their position, ‘while I am even now still dissatisfied; I still long to do something for humanity,’ he would assure himself in moments of pride. ‘But possibly all of them too, my fellows, struggled just as I do, tried after something new, sought a path in life for themselves, and have been brought to the same point as I have by the force of surroundings, of society, of family, that elemental force against which man is powerless,’ he said to himself in moments of modesty. And after spending some time in Moscow he no longer scorned his companions in destiny, but began even to love them, respect them, and pity them like himself.

Pierre no longer suffered from moments of despair, melancholy, and loathing for life as he had done. But the same malady that had manifested itself in acute attacks in former days was driven inwards and never now left him for an instant. ‘What for? What’s the use? What is it is going on in the world?’ he asked himself in perplexity several times a day, instinctively beginning to sound the hidden significance in the phenomena of life. But knowing by experience that there was no answer to these questions, he made haste to try and turn away from them, took up a book, or hurried off to the club, or to Apollon Nikolaevitch’s to chat over the scandals of the town.

‘Elena Vassilyevna, who has never cared for anything but her own body, and is one of the stupidest women in the world,’ Pierre thought, ‘is regarded by people as the acme of wit and refinement, and is the object of their homage. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by every one while he was really great, and since he became a pitiful buffoon the Emperor Francis seeks to offer him his daughter in an illegal marriage. The Spaniards, through their Catholic Church, return thanks to God for their victory over the French on the 14th of June, and the French, through the same Catholic Church, return thanks to God for their victory over the Spaniards on the same 14th of June. My masonic brothers swear in blood that they are ready to sacrifice all for their neighbour, but they don’t give as much as one rouble to the collections for the poor, and they intrigue between Astraea and the manna-seekers, and are in a ferment about the authentic Scottish rug, and an act, of which the man who wrote it did not know the meaning and no one has any need. We all profess the Christian law of forgiveness of sins and love for one’s neighbour—the law, in honour of which we have raised forty times forty churches in Moscow—but yesterday w T e knouted to death a deserter; and the minister of that same law of love and forgiveness, the priest, gave the soldier the cross to kiss before his punishment.’

Such were Pierre’s reflections, and all this universal deception recognised by all, used as he was to seeing it, was always astounding him, as though it were something new. ‘I understand this deceit and tangle of cross-purposes,’ he thought, ‘but how am I to tell them all I understand? I have tried and always found that they understood it as I did, at the

bottom of their hearts, but were only trying not to see it. So I suppose it must be so! But me—what refuge is there for me?’ thought Pierre.

He suffered from an unlucky faculty—common to many men, especially Russians—the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it. Every sphere of activity was in his eyes connected with evil and deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he took up, evil and falsity drove him back again and cut him off from every field of energy. And meanwhile he had to live, he had to be occupied. It was too awful to lie under the burden of those insoluble problems of life, and he abandoned himself to the first distraction that offered, simply to forget them. He visited every possible society, drank a great deal, went in for buying pictures, building, and above all reading.

He read and re-read everything he came across. On getting home he would take up a book, even while his valets were undressing him, and read himself to sleep; and from sleep turned at once to gossip in the drawing-rooms and the club; from gossip to carousals and women; from dissipation back again to gossip, reading, and wine. Wine was more and more becoming a physical necessity to him, and at the same time a moral necessity. Although the doctors told him that in view of his corpulence wine was injurious to him, he drank a very great deal. He never felt quite content except when he had, almost unconsciously, lifted several glasses of wine to his big mouth. Then he felt agreeably warm all over his body, amiably disposed towards all his fellows, and mentally ready to respond superficially to every idea, without going too deeply into it. It was only after drinking a bottle or two of wine that he felt vaguely that the terrible tangled skein of life which had terrified him so before was not so terrible as he had fancied. With a buzzing in his head, chatting, listening to talk or reading after dinner and supper, he invariably saw that tangled skein on some one of its sides. It was only under the influence of wine that he said to himself: ‘Never mind. I’ll disentangle it all; here I have a solution all ready. But now’s not the time. I’ll go into all that later on!’ But that later on never came.

In the morning, before breakfast, all the old questions looked as insoluble and fearful as ever, and Pierre hurriedly snatched up a book and rejoiced when any one came in to see him.

Sometimes Pierre remembered what he had been told of soldiers under fire in ambuscade when they have nothing to do, how they try hard to find occupation so as to bear their danger more easily. And Pierre pictured all men as such soldiers trying to find a refuge from life: some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in women, some in playthings, some in horses, some in politics, some in sport, some in wine, some in the government service. ‘Nothing is trivial, nothing is important, everything is the same; only to escape from it as best one can,’ thought Pierre. ‘Only not to see it, that terrible it.’

At the beginning of the winter Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky and his daughter moved to Moscow. His past, his intellect and originality, and still more the falling off at about that time of the popular enthusiasm for the rule of the Tsar Alexander and the anti-French and patriotic sentiments then prevailing at Moscow, all contributed to make Prince Nikolay Andreitch at once an object of peculiar veneration and the centre of the Moscow opposition to the government.

The prince had greatly aged during that year. He had begun to show unmistakable signs of failing powers, sudden attacks of drowsiness, and forgetfulness of events nearest in time, and exact memory of remote incidents, and a childlike vanity in playing the part of leader of the Moscow opposition. But in spite of that, when the old man came into the drawing-room in the evenings to tea, in his wig and fur coat, and on being incited to do so by some one, began uttering abrupt observations on the past, or still more abrupt and harsh criticisms on the present— he aroused the same feeling of esteem and reverence in all his guests. For visitors, that old-fashioned house, with its huge mirrors, pre-revolutionary furniture, and powdered lackeys, and the stern and shrewd old man, himself a relic of a past age, with the gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman, both so reverently devoted to him, made a stately and agreeable spectacle. But those visitors did not reflect that, apart from the couple of hours during which they saw the household, there were twenty-two hours of the day and night during which the secret, private life of the house went on its accustomed way.

That inner life had become very hard for Princess Marya of late in Moscow. She was deprived in Moscow of her two greatest pleasures— talks with God’s folk and the solitude which had refreshed her spirit it Bleak Hills, and she had none of the advantages and pleasures of :own life. She did not go into society; every one knew that her father .vould not allow her to go anywhere without him, and owing, to his ailing health he could go nowhere himself. She was not even invited low to dinner-parties or balls. Princess Marya had laid aside all hopes >f marriage. She saw the coldness and hostility with which the old prince eceived and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes tppeared at the house. Friends, Princess Marya now had none; during his stay in Moscow she had lost all faith in the two friends who had teen nearest to her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never >een able to be perfectly open, she now regarded with dislike, and for ertain reasons kept at a distance. Julie, with whom Princess Marya ad kept up an unbroken correspondence for five years, was in Moscow. V’hen Princess Marya renewed her personal relations with her, she felt er former friend to be utterly alien to her. Julie, who had become, by ie death of her brothers, one of the wealthiest heiresses in Moscow,

was at that time engrossed in a giddy whirl of fashionable amusements. She was surrounded by young men, whom she believed to have become suddenly appreciative of her qualities. Julie was at that stage when a young lady is somewhat past her first youth in society and feels that her last chance of marrying has come, and that now or never her fate must be decided. With a mournful smile Princess Marya reflected every Thursday that she had now no one to write to, seeing that Julie was here and saw her every week, though her friend’s actual presence gave her no sort of pleasure. Like the old French emigre, who declined to marry the lady with whom he had for so many years spent his evenings, she regretted that julie was here and she had no one to write to. In Moscow Princess Marya had no one to speak to, no one to confide her sorrows to, and many fresh sorrows fell to her lot about this time. The time for Prince Andrey’s return and marriage was approaching, and his commission to her to prepare her father’s mind was so far from being successfully carried out that the whole thing seemed hopeless; and any reference to the young Countess Rostov infuriated the old prince, who was for the most part out of humour at all times now. Another trouble that weighed on Princess Marya of late was due to the lessons she gave to her six-year-old nephew. In her relations with little Nikolay she recognised to her consternation symptoms of her father’s irritable character in herself. However often she told herself that she must not let herself lose her temper, when teaching her nephew, almost every time she sat down with a pointer showing him the French alphabet, she so longed to hasten, to make easy the process of transferring her knowledge to the child, whoi was by now always afraid his auntie would be angry the next moment, that at the slightest inattention she was quivering in nervous haste and vexation, she raised her voice and sometimes pulled him by his little hand and stood him in the corner. When she had stood him in the corner she would begin to cry herself over her evil, wicked nature, and little Nikolay, his sobs vying with hers, would come unbidden out of the corner to pull her wet hands from her face and try to comfort her. But the greatest, far the greatest of the princess’s burdens was her father’s i irascibility, which was invariably directed against his daughter, and hac of late reached the point of cruelty. Had he forced her to spend the night bowing to the ground, had he beaten her, or made her carry ir wood and water, it would never have entered her head that her positior was a hard one. But this loving despot—most cruel of all because he loved, and for that very reason tortured himself and her—knew not onl} how to mortify and humiliate her, but of set purpose, to prove to her tha she was always to blame in everything. Of late he had taken a new de parture, which caused Princess Marya more misery than anything— that was his closer and closer intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne The idea, that had occurred to him in jest at the first moment of receivinj the news of his son’s intentions, that if Andrey got married he, toe would marry Mademoiselle Bourienne, obviously pleased him, and he ha< of late—simply, as Princess Marya fancied, to annoy her—persisted ii

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being particularly gracious to Mademoiselle Bourienne and manifesting his dissatisfaction -with his daughter by demonstrations of love for the Frenchwoman.

One day in Princess Marya’s presence (it seemed to her that her father did it on purpose because she was there) the old prince kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand, and drawing her to him embraced her affectionately. Princess Marya flushed hotly and ran out of the room. A few minutes later, Mademoiselle Bourienne went into Princess Marya’s room, smiling and making some cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess Marya hastily wiped away her tears, with resolute steps went up to the Frenchwoman, and obviously unconscious of what she was doing, with wrathful haste and breaks in her voice she began screaming at her:

‘It’s loathsome, vile, inhuman to take advantage of feebleness . . .’ She could not go on. ‘Go out of my room,’ she cried, and broke into sobs.

The next day the old prince did not say'a word to his daughter, But she noticed that at dinner he gave orders for the dishes to be handed to Mademoiselle Bourienne first. When towards the end of dinner, the footman from habit handed the coffee, beginning with the princess, the old prince flew into a sudden frenzy of rage, flung his cane at Filipp, and immediately gave orders for him to be sent for a soldier.

‘He won’t obey . . . twice I told him! . . . and he didn’t obey. She’s the first person in this house, she’s my best friend,’ screamed the old prince. ‘And if you allow yourself,’ he shouted in a fury, for the first time addressing Princess Marya, ‘ever again, as you dared yesterday ... to forget yourself in her presence, I’ll show you who is master in this house. Away! don’t let me set eyes on you! Beg her pardon!’

Princess Marya begged Amalia Yevgenyevna’s pardon and also her ’ather’s, both for herself and the footman Filipp, who implored her ntervention.

At such moments the feeling that prevailed in Princess Marya’s soul vas akin to the pride of sacrifice. And all of a sudden at such moments, hat father whom she was judging would look for his spectacles, fumbling )y them and not seeing them, or would forget what had just happened, >r would take a tottering step with his weak legs, and look round to see vhether any one had noticed his feebleness, or what was worst of all, it dinner when there were no guests to excite him, he would suddenly all asleep, letting his napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his ;>late. ‘He is old and feeble, and I dare to judge him!’ she thought, re- -olted by herself.

Ill

n the year 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor called Tetivier, who was rapidly coming into fashion. He was a very tall, andsome man, polite as only a Frenchman is, and was said by every ne in Moscow to be an extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received 1 the very best houses, not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.

Prince Nikolay Andreitch had always ridiculed medicine, but of late he had by Mademoiselle Bourienne’s advice allowed this doctor to see him, and had become accustomed to his visits. Metivier used to see the old prince twice a week.

On St. Nikolay’s day, the name-day of the old prince, all Moscow was driving up to the approach of his house, but he gave orders for no one to be admitted to see him. Only a few guests, of whom he gave a list to Princess Marya, were to be invited to dinner.

Metivier, who arrived in the morning with his felicitations, thought himself as the old prince’s doctor entitled to jorcer la consigne, as he told Princess Marya, and went in to the prince. It so happened that on that morning of his name-day the old prince was in one of his very worst tempers. He had spent the whole morning wandering about the house, finding fault with every one, and affecting not to understand what was said to him and to be misunderstood by everybody. Princess Marya knew that mood well from subdued and fretful grumbling, which usually found vent in a violent outburst of fury, and as though facing a cocked and loaded gun, she went all the morning in expectation of an explosion. The morning passed off fairly well, till the doctor’s arrival. After admitting the doctor, Princess Marya sat down with a book in the drawing-room near the door, where she could hear all that passed in the prince’s study.

At first she heard Metivier’s voice alone, then her father’s voice, then both voices began talking at once. The door flew open, and in the doorway she saw the handsome, terrified figure of Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the old prince in a skull-cap and dressing-gown, his face hideous with rage and his eyes lowered.

‘You don’t understand,’ screamed the old prince, ‘but I do! French spy, slave of Bonaparte, spy, out of my house—away, I tell you!’ And he slammed the door. Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne, who ran out of the next room at the noise.

‘The prince is not quite well, bile and rush of blood to the head. Calm yourself, I will look in to-morrow,’ said Metivier; and putting his fingers to his lips he hurried off.

Through the door could be heard steps shuffling in slippers and shouts: ‘Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a minute of peace in my own house! ’

After Metivier’s departure the old prince sent for his daughter, and the whole fury of his passion spent itself on her. She was to blame for the spy’s having been admitted to see him. Had not he told her, told her to make a list, and that those not on the list were on no account to be admitted? Why then had that scoundrel been shown up? She was to blame for everything. With her he could not have a minute of peace, could not die in peace, he told her.

‘No, madame, we must part, we must part, I tell you! I can put up with no more,’ he said, and went out of the room. And as though afraid she might find some comfort, he turned back and trying to assume an air of calmness, he added: ‘And don’t imagine that I have said this in a

moment of temper; no, I’m quite calm and I have thought it well over, and it shall be so—you shall go away, and find some place for yourself! . . But he could not restrain himself, and with the vindictive fury which can only exist where a man loves, obviously in anguish, he shook his fists and screamed at her: ‘Ah! if some fool would marry her!’ He slammed the door, sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.

At two o’clock the six persons he had selected arrived to dinner. Those guests—the celebrated Count Rastoptchin, Prince Lopuhin and his nephew, General Tchatrov, an old comrade of the prince’s in the field, and of the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy were awaiting him in the drawing-room. Boris, who had come on leave to Moscow shortly before, had been anxious to be presented to Prince Nikolay Andreitch, and had succeeded in so far ingratiating himself in his favour, that the old prince made in his case afi exception from his usual rule of excluding all young unmarried men from his house.

The prince did not receive what is called ‘society,’ but his house was the centre of a little circle into which—though it was not talked of much in the town—it was more flattering to be admitted than anywhere else. Boris had grasped that fact a week previously, when he heard Rastoptchin tell the commander-in-chief of Moscow, who had invited him to dine on St. Nikolay’s day, that he could not accept his invitation.

‘On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince Nikolay Andreitch.’

‘Oh yes, yes . . assented the commander-in-chief. ‘How is he? . .

The little party assembled before dinner in the old-fashioned, lofty drawing-room, with its old furniture, was like the solemn meeting of some legal council board.

All sat silent, or if they spoke, spoke in subdued tones. Prince Nikolay Andreitch came in, serious and taciturn. Princess Marya seemed meeker and more timid than usual. The guests showed no inclination to address their conversation to her, for they saw that she had no thought for what they were saying. Count Rastoptchin maintained the conversation alone, relating the latest news of the town and the political world. Lopuhin and the old general took part in the conversation at rare intervals. Prince Nikolay Andreitch listened like a presiding judge receiving a report submitted to him, only testifying by his silence, or from time to time by a brief word, that he was taking cognizance of the facts laid before him.

The tone of the conversation was based on the assumption that no one approved of what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related obviously confirming the view that everything was going ijfrom bad to worse. But in every story that was told, and in every criticism that was offered, what was striking was the way that the speaker checked himself, or was checked, every time the line was reached where 1 criticism might have reference to the person of the Tsar himself.

At dinner the conversation turned on the last political news, Napoleon’s ;eizure of the possessions of the Duke of Oldenburg, and the Russian note,

hostile to Napoleon, which had been despatched to all the European courts.

‘Bonaparte treats all Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel,’ said Rastoptchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times before. ‘One only marvels at the long-suffering or the blindness of the ruling sovereigns. Now it's the Pope’s turn, and Bonaparte doesn’t scruple to try and depose the head of the Catholic Church, and no one says a word. Our Emperor alone has protested against the seizure of the possessions of the Duke of Oldenburg. And even . . .’ Count Rastoptchin broke off, feeling that he was on the very border line beyond which criticism was impossible.

‘Other domains have been offered him instead of the duchy of Oldenburg,’ said the old prince. ‘He shifts the dukes about, as I might move my serfs from Bleak Hills to Bogutcharovo and the Ryazan estates.’

‘The Duke of Oldenburg supports his misfortune with admirable force of character and resignation,’ said Boris, putting in his word respectfully. He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the honour of being presented to the duke. The old prince looked at the young man as though he would have liked to say something in reply, but changed his mind, considering him too young.

‘I have read our protest about the Oldenburg affair, and I was surprised at how badly composed the note was,’ said Count Rastoptchin in the casual tone of a man criticising something with which he is very familiar.

Pierre looked at Rastoptchin in naive wonder, unable to understand why he should be troubled by the defective composition of the note.

‘Does it matter how the note is worded, count,’ he said, ‘if the meaning is forcible?’

‘My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops, it should be easy to have a good style,’ said Count Rastoptchin.

Pierre perceived the point of Count Rastoptchin’s dissatisfaction with the wording of the note.

‘I should have thought there were scribblers enough to write it,’ said the old prince. ‘Up in Petersburg they do nothing but write—not notes only, but new laws they keep writing. My Andryusha up there has written a whole volume of new laws for Russia. Nowadays they’re always at it!’ : And he laughed an unnatural laugh.

The conversation paused for a moment; the old general cleared his throat to draw attention.

‘Did you hear of the last incident at the review in Petersburg? Didn’t the new French ambassadors expose themselves!’

‘Eh? Yes, I did hear something; he said something awkward in the presence of his majesty.’

‘His majesty drew his attention to the grenadier division and the parade march,’ pursued the general; ‘and it seems the ambassador took no notice and had the insolence to say “We in France,” says he, “don’t pay attention to such trivial matters.” The emperor did not vouchsafe him a reply. At the review that followed the emperor, they say, did not i once deign to address him.’

Every one was silent; upon this fact which related to the Tsar personally, no criticism could be offered.

‘Impudent rogues!’ said the old prince. ‘Do you know Metivier? I turned him out of the house to-day. He was here, he was allowed to come in, in spite of my begging no one should be admitted,’ said the old prince, glancing angrily at his daughter. And he told them his whole conversation with the French doctor and his reasons for believing Metivier to be a spy. Though his reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one raised an objection.

After the meat, champagne was handed round. The guests rose from their places to congratulate the old prince. Princess Marya too went up to him. He glanced at her with a cold, spiteful glance, and offered her his shaven, wrinkled cheek. The whole expression of his face told her that their morning’s conversation was not forgotten, that his resolution still held good, and that it was only owing to die presence of their visitors that he did not tell her so now.

When they went into the drawing-room to coffee, the old men sat together.

Prince Nikolay Andreitch grew more animated, and began to express his views on the impending war. He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be unsuccessful so long as we sought alliances with the Germans and went meddling in European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit. We had no business to fight for Austria or against Austria. Our political interests all lay in the East, and as regards Bonaparte, the one thing was an armed force on the frontier, and a firm policy, and he would never again dare to cross the Russian frontier, as he had done in 1807.

‘And how should we, prince, fight against the French!’ said Count Rastoptchin. ‘Can we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our young men, look at our ladies. Our gods are the French, and Paris—our Paradise.’

He began talking more loudly, obviously with the intention of being heard by every one.

‘Our fashions are French, our ideas are French, our feelings are French! You have sent Metivier about his business because he’s a Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies are crawling on their hands and knees after him. Yesterday I was at an evening party, and out of five ladies three were Catholics and had a papal indulgence for embroidering on Sundays. And they sitting all but naked, like the signboards of some public bath-house, if you’ll excuse my saying so. Ah, when one looks at our young people, prince, one would like to take Peter the Great’s old cudgel out of the museum and break a few ribs in the good old Russian style, to knock the nonsense out of them!’

All were Silent. The old prince looked at Rastoptchin with a smile on his face and shook his head approvingly.

‘Well, good-bye, your excellency; don’t you be ill,’ said Rastoptchin,

getting up with the brisk movements characteristic of him, and holding

out his hand to the old prince.

‘Good-bye, my dear fellow. Your talk is a music I’m always glad to listen to!’ said the old prince, keeping hold of his hand and offering him his cheek for a kiss. The others, too, got up when Rastoptchin did.

IV

Prtncess Marya, sitting in the drawing-room, and hearing the old men’s talk and criticisms, did not understand a word of what she was hearing. She thought of nothing but whether all their guests were noticing her father’s hostile attitude to her. She did not even notice the marked attention and amiability shown her during the whole of dinner by Dru- betskoy, who was that day paying them his third visit.

Princess Marya turned with an absent-minded, questioning glance to Pierre, who, with a smile on his face, came up to her, hat in hand, the last of the guests, after the prince had gone out, and they were left alone together in the drawing-room.

‘Can Ivstay a little longer?’ he said, dropping his bulky person into a low chair beside Princess Marya.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘You noticed nothing?’ her eyes asked.

Pierre was in an agreeable, after-dinner mood. He looked straight before him and smiled softly. ‘Have you known that young man long, princess?’ he said.

‘Which one?’

‘Drubetskoy.’

‘No, not long. . . .’

‘Well, do you like him?’

‘Yes; he’s a very agreeable young man. Why do you ask me?’ said Princess Marya, still thinking of her conversation in the morning with her father.

‘Because I have observed, that when a young man comes from Petersburg to Moscow on leave, it is invariably with the object of marrying an heiress.’

‘Have you observed that?’ said Princess Marya.

‘Yes,’ Pierre went on with a smile, ‘and that young man now manages matters so that wherever there are wealthy heiresses—there he is to be found. I can read him like a book. He is hesitating now which to attack, you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagin. He is very attentive to her.’

‘Does he visit them?’

‘Yes, very often. And do you know the new-fashioned method of courting?’ said Pierre, smiling good-humouredly, and obviously feeling 1 in that light-hearted mood of good-natured irony, for which he had so ■ often reproached himself in his diary.

‘No,’ said Princess Marya.

‘To please the Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagin,’ said Pierre.

‘Really!’ said Princess Marya, looking at the kindly face of Pierre, and thinking all the time of her own trouble. ‘It would ease my heart,’ she was thinking, ‘if I could make up my mind to confide all I am feeling to some one. And it is just Pierre I should like to tell it all to. He is so kind and generous. It would ease my heart. He would give me advice.’

‘Would you marry him?’ asked Pierre.

‘O my God, count! there are moments when I would marry any one’— to her own surprise Princess Marya said, with tears in her voice. ‘Ah! how bitter it is to love some one near to one and to feel,’ she went on in a shaking voice, ‘that you can do nothing for him, but cause him sorrow, and when you know you cannot alter it. There’s only one thing —to go away, and where am I to go?’

‘What is wrong? what is the matter with you, princess?’

But Princess Marya, without explaining further, burst into tears.

‘I don’t know what is the matter with me to-day. Don’t take any notice of me, forget what I said to you.’

All Pierre’s gaiety had vanished. He questioned the princess anxiously, begged her to speak out, to confide her trouble to him. But she would only repeat that she begged him to forget what she had said, that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no trouble except the one he knew—her anxiety lest Prince Andrey’s marriage should cause a breach between him and his father.

‘Have you heard anything of the Rostovs?’ she asked to change the subject. ‘I was told they would soon be here. I expect Andrey, too, every day. I should have liked them to see each other here.’

‘And how does he look at the matter now?’ said Pierre, meaning by he the old prince. Princess Marya shook her head.

‘But it can’t be helped. There are only a few months left now before the year is over. And it can’t go on like this. I should only have liked to spare my brother the first minutes. I could have wished they were coming sooner. I hope to get to know her well. . . . You have known them a long while,’ said Princess Marya. ‘Tell me the whole truth, speaking quite seriously. What sort of a girl is she, and how do you like her? But the whole truth, because, you see, Andrey is risking so much in doing this against our father’s will, that I should like to know . . .’

A vague instinct told Pierre that these pleas and repeated requests to him to tell her the whole truth betrayed Princess Marya’s ill-will towards her future sister-in-law, that she wanted Pierre not to approve of Prince Andrey’s choice; but Pierre said what he felt rather than what he thought. ‘I don’t know how to answer your question,’ said he, blushing though he could not have said why himself. 'I really don’t know what kind of girl she is. I can’t analyse her. She’s fascinating; and why she is, I don’t know; that’s all that one can say about her.’

Princess Marya sighed, and her face expressed: ‘Yes; that’s what I expected and feared.’

. ‘Is she clever?’ asked Princess Marya. Pierre thought a moment.

‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘Yes, though. She does not think it worth while to be clever. . . . Yes, no; she is fascinating, and nothing more.’ Princess Marya again shook her head disapprovingly.

‘Ah, I do so want to like her! You tell her so if you see her before I do.’ ‘I have heard that they will be here in a few days,’ said Pierre. Princess Marya told Pierre her plan of getting to know her future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived, and trying to get the old prince accustomed to her.

V

Boris had not succeeded in marrying a wealthy heiress in Petersburg, and it was with that object that he had come to Moscow. In Moscow Boris found himself hesitating between two of the wealthiest heiresses,— Julie and Princess Marya. Though Princess Marya, in spite of her plainness, seemed to him anyway more attractive than Julie, he felt vaguely awkward in paving court to the former. In his last conversation with her, on the old prince’s name-day, she had met all his attempts to talk of the emotions with irrelevant replies, and had obviously not heard what he was saying.

Julie, on the contrary, received his attentions eagerly, though she showed it in a peculiar fashion of her own.

Julie was seven-and-twenty. By the death of her two brothers she had become extremely wealthy. She had by now become decidedly plain. But she believed herself to be not merely as pretty as ever, but actually far more attractive than she had ever been. She was confirmed in this delusion by having become a very wealthy heiress, and also by the fact that as she grew older her society involved less risk for men, and they could behave with more freedom in their intercourse with her, and could profit by her suppers, her soirees, and the lively society that gathered about her, without incurring any obligations to her. A man who would have been afraid of going ten years before to a house where there was a young girl of seventeen, for fear of compromising her and binding himself, would now boldly visit her every day, and treat her not as a marriageable girl, but as an acquaintance of no sex.

The Karagins’ house was that winter one of the most agreeable and hospitable houses in Moscow. In addition to the dinner-parties and soirees, to which guests came by invitation, there were every day large informal gatherings at the Karagins’, principally of men, who had supper there at midnight and stayed on till three o’clock in the morning. Julie did not miss a single ball, entertainment, or theatre. Her dresses were always of the most fashionable. But in spite of that, Julie appeared to have lost all illusions, told every one that she had no faith in love or friendship, or any of the joys of life, and looked for consolation only to the realm beyond. She had adopted the tone of a girl who has suffered a

great disappointment, a girl who has lost her lover or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of the kind had ever happened to her, she was looked upon as having been disappointed in that way, and she did in fact believe herself that she had suffered a great deal in her life. This melancholy neither hindered her from enjoying herself nor hindered young men from spending their time very agreeably in her society. Every guest who visited at the house paid his tribute to the melancholy temper of the hostess, and then proceeded to enjoy himself in society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, or bouts rimes which were in fashion at the Karagins’. A few young men only, among them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie’s melancholy, and with these young men she had more prolonged and secluded conversations on the nothingness of all things earthly, and to them she opened her albums, full of mournful sketches, sentences, and verses.

Julie was particularly gracious to Boris. She deplored his early disillusionment with life, offered him those consolations of friendship she was so well able to offer, having herself suffered so cruelly in life, and opened her album to him. Boris sketched two trees in her album, and wrote under them: ‘Rustic trees, your gloomy branches shed darkness and melancholy upon me.’

In another place he sketched a tomb and inscribed below it: —

‘Death is helpful, and death is tranquil,

Ah, there is no other refuge from sorrow!’

Julie said that couplet was exquisite.

‘There is something so ravishing in the smile of melancholy,’ she said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage copied from a book. ‘It is a ray of light in the shadow, a blend between grief and despair, which shows consolation possible.’

Upon that Boris wrote her the following verses in French:—

‘Poisonous nourishment of a soul too sensitive,

Thou, without whom happiness would be impossible to me,

Tender melancholy, ah, come and console me,

Come, calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,

And mingle a secret sweetness with the tears I feel flowing.’

Julie played to Boris the most mournful nocturnes on the harp. Boris read aloud to her the romance of Poor Liza, and more than once broke down in reading it from the emotion that choked his utterance. When they met in general society Julie and Boris gazed at one another as though they were the only people existing in the world, disillusioned and comprehending each other.

Anna Mihalovna, who often visited the Karagins, took a hand at cards with the mother, and meanwhile collected trustworthy information as to the portion that Julie would receive on her marriage (her dowry was to consist of two estates in the Penza province and forests in the Nizhni-

gorod province). With tender emotion and deep resignation to the will of Providence, Anna Mihalovna looked on at the refined sadness that united her son to the wealthy Julie.

‘Still as charming and as melancholy as ever, my sweet Julie,’ she would say to the daughter. ‘Boris says he finds spiritual refreshment in your house. He has suffered such cruel disillusionment, and he is so sensitive,’ she would say to the mother.

‘Ah, my dear, how attached I have grown to Julie lately,’ she would say to her son, ‘I can’t tell you. But, indeed, who could help loving her! A creature not of this earth! Ah, Boris! Boris! ’ She paused for a moment. ‘And how I feel for her mother,’ she would go on. ‘She showed me to-day the letters and accounts from Penza (they have an immense estate there), and she, poor thing, with no one to help her. They do take such advantage of her!’

Boris heard his mother with a faintly perceptible smile. He laughed blandly at her simple-hearted wiles, but he listened to her and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and Nizhnigorod estates.

Julie had long been expecting an offer from her melancholy adorer, and was fully prepared to accept it. But a sort of secret feeling of repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to be married, for her affectation, and a feeling of horror at renouncing all possibility of real love made Boris still delay. The term of his leave was drawing to a close. Whole days at a time, and every day he spent at the Karagins’; and each day Boris resolved, as he thought things over, that he would make an offer on the morrow. But in Julie’s presence, as he watched her red face and her chin, almost always sprinkled with powder, her moist eyes, and the expression of her countenance, which betokened a continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to the unnatural ecstasies of conjugal love, Boris could not utter the decisive word, although in imagination he had long regarded himself as the owner of the Penza and Nizhnigorod estates, and had disposed of the expenditure of their several revenues. Julie saw the hesitation of Boris, and the idea did sometimes occur to her that she was distasteful to him. But feminine self-flattery promptly afforded her comfort, and she assured herself that it was love that made him retiring. Her melancholy was, however, beginning to pass into irritability, and not long before the end of Boris’s leave she adopted a decisive plan of action. Just before the expiration of Boris’s leave there appeared in Moscow, and—it need hardly be said—also in the drawingroom of the Karagins’, no less a person than Anatole Kuragin, and Julie, abruptly abandoning her melancholy, became exceedingly lively and cordial to Kuragin.

‘My dear,’ said Anna Mihalovna to her son, ‘I know from a trustworthy source that Prince Vassily is sending his son to Moscow to marry him to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be most sorry for her. What do you think about it, my dear?’ said Anna Mihalovna.

Boris was mortified at the idea of being unsuccessful, of having wasted all that month of tedious, melancholy courtship of Julie, and of seeing all

WARANDPEACE 5*9

the revenues of those Penza estates—which he had mentally assigned to the various purposes for which he needed them—pass into other hands, especially into the hands of that fool Anatole. He drove off to the Kara- gins’ with the firm determination to make an offer. Julie met him with a gay and careless face, casually mentioned how much she had enjoyed the ball of the evening, and asked him when he was leaving. Although Boris had come with the intention of speaking of his love, and was therefore resolved to take a tender tone, he began to speak irritably of the fickleness of woman; saying that women could so easily pass from sadness to joy, and their state of mind depended entirely on what sort of man happened to be paying them attention. Julie was offended, and said that that was quite true, indeed, that a woman wanted variety, and that always the same thing would bore any one.

‘Then I would advise you . . Boris was beginning, meaning to say something cutting; but at that instant the mortifying reflection occurred to him that he might leave Moscow without having attained his object, and having wasted his efforts in vain (an experience he had never had yet). He stopped short in the middle of a sentence, dropped his eyes, to avoid seeing her disagreeably exasperated and irresolute face, and said, ‘But it was not to quarrel with you that I have come here. On the contrary . . He glanced at her to make sure whether he could go on. All irritation had instantly vanished from her face, and her uneasy and imploring eyes were fastened upon him in greedy expectation.

‘I can always manage so as to see very little of her,’ thought Boris. ‘And the thing’s been begun and must be finished!’ He flushed crimson, raised his eyes to her face, and said to her, ‘You know my feeling for you!’ There was no need to say more. Julie’s countenance beamed with triumph and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say everything that is usually said on such occasions, to say that he loved her, and had never loved any woman more than her. She knew that for her Penza estates and her Nizhnigorod forests she could demand that, and she got all she demanded.

The young engaged couple, with no further allusions to trees that enfolded them in gloom and melancholy, made plans for a brilliant establishment in Petersburg, paid visits, and made every preparation for a splendid wedding.

VI

Count Ilya Andreitch Rostov arrived in Moscow towards the end of January with Natasha and Sonya. The countess was still unwell, and unable to travel, but they could not put off coming till she recovered, for Prince Andrey was expected in Moscow every day. They had, besides, to order the trousseau, to sell the estate in the suburbs of Moscow, and to take advantage of old Prince Bolkonsky’s presence in Moscow to present his future daughter-in-law to him. The Rostovs’ house in Moscow had not been heated all the winter; and as they were coming only for

a short time, and the countess was not with them, Count Ilya Andreitch made up his mind to stay with Marya Dmitryevna Ahrostimov, who had long been pressing her hospitality upon the count.

Late in the evening the four loaded sledges of the Rostovs drove into the courtyard of Marya Dmitryevna in Old Equerrys’ Place. Marya Dmitryevna lived alone. She had by now married off her daughter. Her sons were all in the service.

She still held herself as erect; still gave every one her opinions in the same loud, outspoken, decided fashion; and her whole bearing seemed a reproof to other people for every sort of weakness, passion, and temptation, of which she would not admit the bare possibility. In the early morning, in a house-jacket, she looked after the management of her household. Then she drove on saints’ days to Mass, and from Mass to the gaols and prisons; and of what she did there, she never spoke to any one.

On ordinary days she dressed and received petitioners of various classes, of whom some sought her aid every day. Then she had dinner, an abundant and appetising meal, at which some three or four guests were always present. After dinner she played a game of boston; and at night had the newspapers and new books read aloud to her while she knitted. It was only as a rare exception that she went out in the evening; if she did so, it was only to visit the most important people in the town.

She had not gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived, and the door in the vestibule squeaked on the block, as the Rostovs and their servants came in from the cold outside. Marya Dmitryevna stood in the doorway of the hall, with her spectacles slipping down on her nose, and her head flung back, looking with a stern and irate face at the new-comers. It might have been supposed that she was irritated at their arrival, and would pack them off again at once, had she not at the very time been giving careful instructions to her servants where to install her guests and their belongings.

‘The count’s things? Bring them here,’ she said, pointing to the trunks, and not bestowing a greeting on any one. ‘The young ladies, this way to the left. Well, what are we pottering about for?’ she called to her maids. ‘Warm the samovar! She’s plumper, prettier,’ she pronounced of Natasha, flushed from the frosty air, as she drew her closer by her hood. ‘Foo! she is cold! You make haste and get your wraps off,’ she shouted to the count, who would have kissed her hand. ‘You’re frozen, I warrant. Rum for the tea! Sonyushka, bonjour,’ she said to Sonya, indicating by this French phrase the slightly contemptuous affectionateness of her attitude to Sonya.

When they had all taken off their outdoor things, set themselves straight after the journey, and come in to tea, Marya Dmitryevna kissed them all in due course.

‘Heartily glad you have come, and are staying with me,’ she said. ‘It’s long been time you were here,’ she said, with a significant glance at Natasha. . . . ‘The old fellow’s here, and his son’s expected from day to

day. You must, you must make their acquaintance. Oh, well, we shall talk of that later on,’ she added, with a glance at Sonya, showing that she did not care to talk of it before her. ‘Now, listen,’ she turned to the count, ‘what do you want to do to-morrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?’—she crooked one finger. ‘The tearful Anna Mihalovna—two. She’s here with her son. The son’s to be married too! Then Bezuhov. He’s here, too, with his wife. He ran away from her, and she has come trotting after him. He dined with me last Wednesday. Well, and I’ll take them’—she indicated the young ladies—‘to-morrow to Iversky chapel, and then we shall go to Aubert-Chalmey. You’ll be getting everything now, I expect! Don’t judge by me—the sleeves nowadays are like this! The other day the young princess, Irina Vassilyevna, came to see me, just as though she had put two barrels on her arms, a dreadful fright. Every day there’s a new fashion. And what sort of business is it you have come for yourself?’ she said severely, addressing the count.

‘Everything has come together,’ answered the count. ‘There’s the girl’s rags to buy; and now there’s a purchaser turned up for the Moscow estate and the house. If you’ll graciously permit it, I’ll choose an opportunity and drive over to Maryinskoe for a day, leaving my girls on your hands.’

‘Very good, very good, they’ll be safe enough with me. I’m as safe as the Mortgage Bank. I’ll take them where they must go, and scold them and pet them too,’ said Marya Dmitryevna, putting her big hand on the cheek of her favourite and god-daughter Natasha.

Next morning Marya Dmitryevna bore the young ladies off to Iversky chapel and to Madame Aubert-Chalmey, who was so frightened of Marya Dmitryevna that she always sold her dresses at a loss simply to get rid of her as soon as possible. Marya Dmitryevna ordered almost the whole trousseau. On their return, she sent every one out of the room but Natasha, and called her favourite to sit beside her arm-chair.

‘Well, now we can have a chat. I congratulate you on your betrothed. A fine fellow you have hooked! I’m glad of it for your sake, and I have known him since he was that high’—she held her hand a yard from the floor. Natasha flushed joyfully. ‘I like him and all his family. Now, listen!

I You know, of course, that old Prince Nikolay was very much against his son’s marrying. He’s a whimsical old fellow! Of course, Prince Andrey is not a child, he can get on without him, but to enter a family against the father’s will is not a nice thing to do. One wants peace and love in a family. You’re a clever girl, you’ll know how to manage things. You must use your wits and your kind heart. And every thing will come right.’

Natasha was silent, not as Marya Dmitryevna supposed ^rom shyness. In reality Natasha disliked any one’s interfering in what touched her love for Prince Andrey, which seemed to her something so apart from all human affairs, that no one, as she imagined, could understand it. She loved Prince Andrey, and only him, and knew only him; he loved her, and was to arrive in a day~ or two and carry her off. She did not care about anything else.

I have known him a long while, do you see; and Masha, your sister- in-law, I love. Sisters-in-law are said to be mischief-makers, but she— well, she wouldn’t hurt a fly. She has begged me to bring you two together. 1 ou must go to see her to-morrow with your father, and be as nice as possible; you are younger than she is. By the time your young man comes back, you 11 be friends with his sister and his father, and they will have learned to love you. Yes or no? It will be better so, eh?’

‘Oh yes!’ Natasha responded reluctantly.

VII

Next day, by the advice of Marya Dmitryevna, Count Ilya Andreitch went with Natasha to call on Prince Nikolay Andreitch. The count prepared for the visit by no means in a cheerful spirit: in his heart he was afraid. Count Ilya Andreitch had a vivid recollection of his last interview with the old prince at the time of the levying of the militia, when, in reply to his invitation to dinner, he had had to listen to a heated reprimand for furnishing less than the required number of men. Natasha in her best dress was, on the contrary, in the most cheerful frame of mind. ‘They can’t help liking me,’ she thought; ‘every one always does like me. And I’m so ready to do anything they please for them, so readily to love them—him for being his father, and her for being his sister—they can have no reason for not loving me!’

They drove to the gloomy old house in Vosdvizhenka, and went into the vestibule.

‘Well now, with God’s blessing,’ said the count, half in jest, half in earnest. But Natasha noticed that her father was in a nervous fidget as he went into the entry, and asked timidly and softly whether the prince and the princess were at home. After their arrival had been announced, there was some perturbation visible among the prince’s servants. The footman, who was running to announce them, was stopped by another footman in the big hall, and they whispered together. A maid-servant ran into the hall, and hurriedly said something, mentioning the princess. At last one old footman came out with a wrathful air, and announced to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but the princess begged them to walk up. The first person to meet the visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and daughter with marked courtesy, and conducted them to the princess’s apartment. The princess, with a frightened and agitated face, flushed in patches, ran in, treading heavily, to meet her visitors, doing her best to seem cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess Marya disliked Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed, too frivolously gay and vain. Princess Marya had no idea that before she had seen her future sister-in-law she had been unfavourably disposed to her, through unconscious envy of her beauty, her youth, and her happiness, and through jealousy of her brother’s love for her. Apart from this insuperable feeling of antipathy to her, Princess

Marya was at that moment agitated by the fact that on the Rostovs having been announced the old prince had shouted that he didn’t want to see them, that Princess Marya could see them if she chose, but they were not to be allowed in to see him. Princess Marya resolved to see the Rostovs, but she was every instant in dread of some freak on the part of the old prince, as he had appeared greatly excited by the arrival of the Rostovs.

‘Well, here I have brought you my songstress, princess,’ said the count, bowing and scraping, while he looked round uneasily as though he were afraid the old prince might come in. ‘How glad I am that you should make friends. . . . Sorry, very sorry, the prince is still unwell’; and uttering a few more stock phrases, he got up. ‘If you’ll allow me, princess, to leave you my Natasha for a quarter of an hour, I will drive round- only a few steps from here—to Dogs’ Square to see Anna Semyonovna, and then come back for her.’

Count Ilya Andreitch bethought himself of this diplomatic stratagem to give the future sisters-in-law greater freedom to express their feelings to one another (so he told his daughter afterwards), but also to avoid the possibility of meeting the prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not tell his daughter this; but Natasha perceived this dread and uneasiness of her father’s, and felt mortified by it. She blushed for her father, felt still angrier at having blushed, and glanced at the princess with a bold, challenging air, meant to express that she was not afraid of any one. The princess told the count that she would be delighted, and only begged him to stay a little longer at Anna Semyonovna’s, and Ilya Andreitch departed.

In spite of the uneasy glances flung at her by Princess Marya, who wanted to talk to Natasha by herself, Mademoiselle Bourienne would not leave the room, and persisted in keeping up a conversation about Moscow entertainments and theatres. Natasha felt offended by the delay in the entry, by her father’s nervousness, and by the constrained manner of the princess, who seemed to her to be making a favour of receiving her. And then everything displeased her. She did not like Princess Marya. She seemed to her very ugly, affected, and frigid. Natasha suddenly, as it were, shrank into herself, and unconsciously assumed a nonchalant air, vhich repelled Princess Marya more and more. After five minutes of rksome and constrained conversation, they heard the sound of slippered eet approaching rapidly. Princess Marya’s face expressed terror: the loor of the room opened, and the prince came in, in a white night-cap ! tnd dressing-gown.

‘Ah, madam,’ he began, ‘madam, countess. . . . Countess Rostov . . . f I’m not mistaken ... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me ... I lidn’t know, madam. As God’s above, I didn’t know that you were deign- ng to visit us, and came in to my daughter in this costume. I beg you to xcuse me ... as God’s above, I didn’t know,’ he repeated so unnatu- ally, with emphasis on the word ‘God,’ and so unpleasantly, that Princess darya rose to her feet with her eyes on the ground, not daring to look

either at her father or at Natasha. Natasha, getting up and curtseying, did not know either what she was to do. Only Mademoiselle Bourienne smiled agreeably.

‘I beg you to excuse me, I beg you to excuse me! As God’s above, I didn’t know,’ muttered the old man, and looking Natasha over from head to foot, he went out.

Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this apparition, and began talking about the prince’s ill-health. Natasha and Princess Marya gazed dumbly at one another, and the longer they gazed dumbly at one another without saying what they wanted to say, the more unfavourably each felt disposed to the other.

When the count returned, Natasha showed a discourteous relief at seeing him, and made haste to get away. At that moment she almost hated that stiff, oldish princess, who could put her in such an awkward position, and spend half an hour with her without saying a word about Prince Andrey. ‘I couldn’t be the first to speak of him before that Frenchwoman,’ thought Natasha. Princess Marya meanwhile was tortured by the very same feeling. She knew what she had to say to Natasha, but she could not do it, both because Mademoiselle Bourienne prevented her, and because—she did not know herself why—it was difficult for her to begin to speak of the marriage. The count was already going out of the room when Princess Marya moved rapidly up to Natasha, took her hand, and, with a heavy sigh, said: ‘Wait a moment, I want . . .’ Natasha’s expression as she looked at Princess Marya was ironical, though she did not know why.

‘Dear Natalie,’ said Princess Marya, ‘do believe how glad I am that my brother has found such happiness . . .’ She paused, feeling she was telling a lie. Natasha noticed the pause, and guessed the reason of it.

‘I imagine, princess, that it is not now suitable to speak of that,’ said Natasha, with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears rising in her throat.

‘What have I said, what have I done?’ she thought as soon as she had gone out of the room.

They had to wait a long while for Natasha to come to dinner that day. She was sitting in her room, crying like a child, choking, and sobbing. Sonya stood over her, and kept kissing her on the head.

‘Natasha, what is it?’ she kept saying. ‘Why need you mind about them? It will pass, Natasha.’

‘No, if only you knew how insulting it was ... as though I . . .’

‘Don’t talk of it, Natasha; it’s not your fault, you see, so what does it matter to you! Kiss me,’ said Sonya.

Natasha raised her head, and kissing her friend on the lips, pressed her wet face against her.

‘I can’t say; I don’t know. It’s no one’s fault,’ said Natasha; ‘it’s my fault. But it’s all awfully painful. Oh, why doesn’t he come? . . .’

She went down to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitryevna, who had heard how the old prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to

notice Natasha's troubled face, and kept up a loud, jesting conversation at table with the count and the other guests.

VIII

That evening the Rostovs went to the opera, for which Marya Dmi- tryevna had obtained them a box.

Natasha had no wish to go, but it was impossible to refuse after Marya Dmitryevna’s kindness, especially as it had been arranged expressly for her. When she was dressed and waiting for her father in the big hall, she looked at herself in the big looking-glass, and saw that she was looking pretty, very pretty. She felt even sadder, but it was a sweet and tender sadness.

‘My God, if he were only here, I wouldn’t have any stupid shyness of something as I used to, but in quite a new way, simply, I would embrace him, press close to him, force him to look at me with those scrutinising, inquisitive eyes, with which he used so often to look at me, and then I would make him laugh, as he used to laugh then; and his eyes—how I pee those eyes!’ thought Natasha. ‘And what does it matter to me about his father and sister; I love no one but him, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile, manly, and yet childlike. . . . No, better not think of him, not think, forget, utterly forget him for the time. I can’t bear this suspense; I shall sob in a minute,’ and she turned away from the looking-glass, making an effort not to weep. ‘And how can Sonya love Nikolenka so quietly, so calmly, and wait so long and so patiently!’ she wondered, looking at Sonya, who came in, dressed for the theatre with a fan in her hand. ‘No, she’s utterly different. I can’t.’

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and moved that to love and know that she was loved was not enough for her: she wanted now, now at once to embrace the man she loved, and to speak and hear from him the words of love, of which her heart was full. When she was in the carriage sitting beside her father and pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flitting by the frozen window, she felt even sadder and more in love, and forgot with whom and where she was going. The Rostovs’ carriage fell into the line of carriages, and drove up to the theatre, its wheels crunching slowly over the snow. Natasha and Sonya skipped hurriedly out holding up their dresses; the count stepped out supported by the footmen, and all three walked to the corridor for the boxes in the stream of ladies and gentlemen going in and people selling programmes. They could hear the music already through the closed doors.

‘Natasha, your hair . . .’ whispered Sonya. The box-opener deferentially and hurriedly slipped before the ladies and opened the door of the box. The music became more distinctly audible at the door, and they saw the brightly lighted rows of boxes, with the bare arms and shoulders )f the ladies, and the stalls below, noisy, and gay with uniforms. A lady entering the next box looked round at Natasha with an envious, feminine

526 WARANDPEACE

glance. The curtain had not yet risen and they were playing the overture. Natasha smoothing down her skirt went in with Sonya, and sat down looking round at the brightly lighted tiers of boxes facing them. The sensation she had not experienced for a long while—that hundreds of eyes were looking at her bare arms and neck—suddenly came upon her both pleasantly and unpleasantly, calling up a whole swarm of memories, desires, and emotions connected with that sensation.

The two strikingly pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Ilya Andreitch, who had not been seen for a long while in Moscow, attracted general attention. Moreover, every one had heard vaguely of Natasha’s engagement to Prince Andrey, knew that the Rostovs had been living in the country ever since, and looked with curiosity at the girl who was to make one of the best matches in Russia.

Natasha had, so every one told her, grown prettier in the country; and that evening, owing to her excited condition, she was particularly pretty. She made a striking impression of fulness of life and beauty, together with indifference to everything around her. Her black eyes gazed at the crowd, seeking out no one, while her slender arm, bare to above the elbow, leaned on the velvet edge of the box, and her hand, holding the programme, clasped and unclasped in time to the music with obvious unconsciousness.

‘Look, there’s Alenina,’ said Sonya, ‘with her mother, isn’t it?’

‘Heavens, Mihail Kirillitch is really stouter than ever,’ said the old count.

‘Look! our Anna Mihalovna in such a cap!’

‘The Karagins, Julie, and Boris with them. One can see at once they are engaged.’

‘Drubetskoy has made his offer! To be sure, I heard so to-day,’ said Shinshin, coming into the Rostovs’ box.

Natasha looked in the direction her father was looking in and saw Julie with diamonds on her thick, red neck (Natasha knew it was powdered), sitting with a blissful face beside her mother.

Behind them could be seen the handsome, well-brushed head of Boris,) with a smile inclining his ear towards Julie’s mouth. He looked from under his brows at the Rostovs, and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.

‘They are talking about us, about me and himself!’ thought Natasha. ‘And he is, most likely, soothing his fiancee’s jealousy of me; they needn’t 1 worry themselves! If only they knew how little they matter to me, any one of them.’

Behind the engaged couple sat Anna Mihalovna in a green cap, with a face happy, in honour of the festive occasion, and devoutly resigned; to the will of God. Their box was full of that atmosphere of an engaged, couple—which Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away; and suddenly all that had been humiliating in her morning visit came back to her mind.

‘What right has he not to want to receive me into his family ? Ah, bet-

ter not think about it, not think till he comes back!’ she said to herself, ind began to look about at the faces, known and unknown, in the stalls.

In the front of the stalls, in the very centre, leaning back against the •ail stood Dolohov, in a Persian dress, with his huge shock of curly hair :ombed upwards. He stood in the most conspicuous place in the theatre, veil aware that he was attracting the attention of the whole audience, and is much at his ease as though he had been alone in his room. The most >rilliant young men in Moscow were all thronging about him, and he vas obviously the leading figure among them.

Count Ilya Andreitch, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya, pointing )ut her former admirer.

‘Did you recognise him?’ he asked. ‘And where has he dropped from?’ ;aid he, turning to Shinshin. ‘I thought he had disappeared somewhere?’

‘He did disappear,’ answered Shinshin. ‘He was in the Caucasus, and le ran away from there, and they say he has been acting as minister to ome reigning prince in Persia, and there killed the Shah’s brother. Well, ill the Moscow ladies are wild about him! “Dolohov the Persian,” that’s vhat does it! Nowadays there’s nothing can be done without Dolohov; hey do homage to him, invite you to meet him, as if he were a sturgeon,’ aid Shinshin. ‘Dolohov and Anatole Kuragin have taken all the ladies’ learts by storm.’

A tall, handsome woman with a mass of hair and very naked, ^jlump, vhite arms and shoulders, and a double row of big pearls round her hroat, walked into the next box, and was a long while settling into her ilace and rustling her thick silk gown.

Natasha unconsciously examined that neck and the shoulders, the iearls, the coiffure of this lady, and admired the beauty of the shoulders nd the pearls. While Natasha was scrutinising her a second time, the idy looked round, and meeting the eyes of Count Ilya Andreitch, she odded and smiled to him. It was the Countess Bezuhov, Pierre’s wife, ’he count, who knew every one in society, bent over and entered into onversation with her.

‘Have you been here long?’ he began. ‘I’m coming; I’m coming to iss your hand. I have come to town on business and brought my girls i'ith me. They say Semyonovna’s acting is superb,’ the count went on. Zount Pyotr Kirillovitch never forgot us. Is he here?’

. ‘Yes, he meant to come,’ said Ellen, looking intently at Natasha. County Ilya Andreitch sat down again in his place.

‘Handsome, isn’t she?’ he whispered to Natasha.

‘Exquisite! ’ said Natasha. ‘One might well fall in love with her! ’

At that moment they heard the last chords of the overture, and the ipping of the conductor’s stick. Late comers hurried to their seats in the alls, and the curtain rose.

■ As soon as the curtain rose, a hush fell on the boxes and stalls, and 1 the men, old and young, in their frock coats or uniforms, all the omen with precious stones on their bare flesh concentrated all their tention with eager curiosity on the stage. Natasha too began to look at it.

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