‘Oh yes, your plan. To be an hussar? I’ll speak about it; to-day I’ll tell them all about it.’
‘Well, my dear fellow, have you got the manifesto?’ asked the old count. ‘My little countess was at the service in the Razumovskys’ chapel; she heard the new prayer there. Very fine it was, she tells me.’
‘Yes, I have got it,’ answered Pierre. ‘The Tsar will be here tomorrow. „ . . There’s to be an extraordinary meeting of the nobility and a levy they say of ten per thousand. Oh, I congratulate you.’
‘Yes, yes, thank God. Well, and what news from the army?’
‘Our soldiers have retreated again. They are before Smolensk, they say,’ answered Pierre.
‘Mercy on us, mercy on us!’ said the count. ‘Where’s the manifesto?’
‘The Tsar’s appeal? Ah, yes!’ Pierre began looking for the papers in his pockets, and could not find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the countess’s hand as she came in, and looked round uneasily, evidently expecting Natasha, who had left off singing now, but had not come into the drawing-room. ‘Good Heavens, I don’t know where I have put it,’ he said.
‘To be sure, he always mislays everything,’ said the countess.
Natasha came in with a softened and agitated face and sat down, ; looking mutely at Pierre. As soon as she came into the room, Pierre’s face, which had been overcast, brightened, and while still seeking for the paper, he looked several times intently at her.
‘By God, I’ll drive round, I must have forgotten them at home. Of course . ...’
‘Why, you will be late for dinner.’
‘Oh! and the coachman has not waited.’
But Sonya had gone into the vestibule to look for the papers, and there found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had carefully put them under the lining. Pierre would have read them.
‘No, after dinner,’ said the old count, who was obviously looking forward to the reading of them as a great treat.
WARANDPEACE 631
At dinner they drank champagne to the health of the new cavalier of St. George, and Shinshin told them of the news of the town, of the illness of the old Georgian princess, and of the disappearance of Metivier from Moscow, and described how a German had been brought before Ras- toptchin by the people, who declared (so Count Rastoptchin told the story) that he was a champignon, and how Count Rastoptchin had bade them let the champignon go, as he was really nothing but an old German mushroom.
‘They keep on seizing people,’ said the count. ‘I tell the countess she ought not to speak French so much. Now’s not the time to do it.’
‘And did you hear,’ said Shinshin, ‘Prince Galitzin has engaged a Russian teacher—he’s learning Russian. It begins to be dangerous to speak French in the streets.’
‘Well, Count Pyotr Kirillitch, now if they raise a general militia, you will have to mount a horse too, ah?’ said the old count addressing Pierre.
Pierre was dreamy and silent all dinner-time. He looked at the count as though not understanding.
‘Yes, yes, for the war,’ he said. ‘No! A fine soldier I should make! And yet everything’s so strange; so strange! Why, I don’t understand it myself. I don’t know, I am far from being military in my taste, but in these days no one can answer for himself.’
After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in a low chair, and with a serious face asked Sonya, who enjoyed the reputation of a good reader, to read the Tsar’s appeal.
‘To our metropolitan capital Moscow. The enemy has entered our border with an immense host and comes to lay waste our beloved country,’ Sonya read conscientiously in her thin voice. The count listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natasha sat erect, looking inquisitively and directly from her father to Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess shook her head disapprovingly and wrath fully at every solemn expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw nothing but that the danger menacing her son would not soon be over. Shinshin, pursing his lips up into a sarcastic smile, was clearly preparing to make a joke at the first subject that presented itself: at Sonya’s reading, the count’s next remark, or even the manifesto itself, if no better pretext should be found.
After reading of the dangers threatening Russia, the hopes the Tsar rested upon Moscow, and particularly on its illustrious nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice, due principally to the attention with which they were listening to her, read the last words: ‘We shall without delay be in the midst of our people in the capital, and in other parts of our empire, for deliberation, and for the guidance of all our militia levies, both those which are already barring the progress of the foe, and those to be formed for conflict with him, wherever he may appear. And may the ruin with which he threatens us recoil on his own head, and mav Europe, delivered from bondage, glorify the name of Russia!’
