‘Well, at last, I have done everything; now I shall rest,’ thought the prince, and he left it to Tihon to undress him.
Frowning with vexation at the effort he had to make to take off his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, dropped heavily down on his bed, and seemed to sink into thought, staring contemptuously at his yellow, withered legs. He was not really thinking, but simply pausing before the effort to lift his legs up and lay them in the bed. ‘Ugh, how hard it is! Ugh, if these toils could soon be over, and if you would let me go!’ he mused. Pinching his lips tightly, he made that effort for the twenty thousandth time, and lay down. But he had hardly lain down, when all at once the bed seemed to rock regularly to and fro under him, as though it were heaving and jolting. He had this sensation almost every night. He opened his eyes that were closing themselves.
‘No peace, damn them!’ he grumbled, with inward rage at some persons unknown. ‘Yes, yes, there was something else of importance— something of great importance I was saving up to think of in bed. The bolts? No, I did speak about them. No, there was something, something in the drawing-room. Princess Marya talked some nonsense. Dessalle— he’s a fool— said something, something in my pocket—I don’t remember.’
‘Tishka! what were we talking about at dinner?’
‘About Prince Mihail . . .’
‘Stay, stay’—the prince slapped his hand down on the table. ‘Yes, I know, Prince Andrey’s letter. Princess Marya read it. Dessalle said something about Vitebsk. I’ll read it now.’
He told Tihon to get the letter out of his pocket, and to move up the little table with the lemonade and the spiral wax candle on it, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only then in the stillness of the night, as he read the letter, in the faint light under the green shade, for the first time he grasped for an instant its meaning. ‘The French are at Vitebsk, in four days’ march they may be at Smolensk; perhaps they are there by now. Tishka! ’ Tihon jumped up. ‘No, nothing, nothing! ’ he cried.
He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And there rose before his mind the Danube, bright midday, the reeds, the Russian camp, and he, a young general, without one wrinkle on his brow, bold, gay, ruddy, entering Potyomkin’s gay-coloured tent, and the burning sensation of envy of the favourite stirs within him as keenly as at the time. And he recalls every word uttered at that first interview with Potyomkin. And then he sees a plump, short woman with a sallow, fat face, the mother empress, her smiles and words at her first gracious reception of him; and then her face as she lay on the bier, and the quarrel with Zubov over her coffin for the right to kiss her hand.
‘Oh, to make haste, to make haste back to that time, and oh, that the present might soon be over and they might leave me in peace!’
IV
Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky, was sixty versts from Smolensk, a little to the rear of it, and three versts from the main road to Moscow.
The same evening on which the old prince gave Alpatitch his instructions, Dessalle asked for a few words with Princess Marya, and told her that since the prince was not quite well and was taking no steps to secure his own safety, though from Prince Andrey’s letter it was plain that to stay on at Bleak Hills was not free from danger, he respectfully advised her to write herself, and send by Alpatitch a letter to the governor at Smolensk, and to ask him to let her know the position of affairs and the degree of danger they were running at Bleak Hills. Dessalle wrote the letter to the governor for Princess Marya and she signed it, and the letter was given to Alpatitch with instructions to give it to the governor, and in case there was danger, to come back as quickly as possible.
When he had received all his orders, Alpatitch put on his white beaver hat—a gift from the prince—and carrying a stick in his hand, like the prince, went out, accompanied by all his household, to get into the leather gig harnessed to three sleek, roan horses.
The bells were tied up and stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bleak Hills to drive with bells. But Alpatitch loved to have bells ringing when he went a long journey. All Alpatitch’s satellites, the counting-house clerk, the servants’ cook and the head cook, two old women, a foot-boy, coachman, and various other servants saw him off.
His daughter put chintz-covered, down pillows under him and behind his back. His old sister-in-law slyly popped in a kerchief full of things. One of the coachmen helped him to get in.
‘There, there, women’s fuss! Women folk, women folk!’ said Alpatitch, puffing and talking rapidly, just as the old prince used to talk. He sat down in the gig, giving the counting-house clerk his last directions about the work to be done in the fields; and then dropping his imitation of the prince, Alpatitch took his hat off his bald head and crossed himself three times.
