‘I will bring him directly, M. Dessalle. Good-night,’ said Pierre, giv- lg his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned smiling to Nikolinka. ‘We ave not seen each other at all yet. Marie, how like he is growing,’ he dded, turning to Countess Marya.
‘Like my father?’ said the boy, flushing crimson and looking up at ierre with rapturous, shining eyes.
Pierre nodded to him, and went on with the conversation that had een interrupted by the children. Countess Marya had some canvas mbroidery in her hands; Natasha sat with her eyes fixed on her hus- and. Nikolay and Denisov got up, asked for pipes, smoked, and took ups of tea from Sonya, still sitting with weary pertinacity at the samovar, nd asked questions of Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy, with his hining eyes, sat unnoticed by any one in a corner. Turning the curly iead and the slender neck above his laydown collar to follow Pierre’s
movements, lie trembled now and then, and murmured something himself, evidently thrilled by some new and violent emotion.
The conversation turned on the scandals of the day in the high government, circles, a subject in which the majority of people usual find the chief interest of home politics. Denisov, who was dissatisfied wi the government on account of his own disappointments in the servii heard with glee of all the follies, as he considered them, that were goi on now in Petersburg, and made his comments on Pierre’s words in har and in cutting phrases.
‘In old days you had to be a German to be anybody, nowadays y< have to dance with the Tatarinov woman and Madame Kriidner, to re;
. . . Eckartshausem and the rest of that crew. Ugh! I would let go< old Bonaparte loose again! He would knock all the nonsense out them. Why, isn’t it beyond everything to have given that fellow Schwar the Semyonovsky regiment?’ he shouted.
Though Nikolay had not Denisov’s disposition to find everythir amiss, he too thought it dignified and becoming to criticise the goven ment, and he believed that the fact, that A. had been appointed ministi 1 of such a department, and B. had been made governor of such a provinc and the Tsar had said this, and the minister had said that, were a matters of the greatest importance. And he thought it incumbent upc him to take an interest in the subject and to question Pierre about ij So the questions put by Nikolay and Denisov kept the conversation o the usual lines of gossip about the higher government circles.
But Natasha, who knew every thought and expression in her husbanc saw that Pierre all the while wanted to lead the conversation into anothe channel, and to open his heart on his own idea, the idea which he ha gone to Petersburg to consult his new friend Prince Fyodor about. Sh saw too that he could not lead up to this, and she came to the rescu with a question: How had he settled things with Prince Fyodor?
‘What was that?’ asked Nikolay.
‘All the same thing over and over again,’ said Pierre, looking abou him. ‘Every one sees that things are all going so wrong that they can’ be endured, and that it’s the duty of all honest men to oppose it to tb utmost of their power.’
‘Why, what can honest men do?’ said Nikolay, frowning slightly ‘What can be done?’
‘Why, this . . .’
‘Let us go into the study,’ said Nikolay.
Natasha, who had a long while been expecting to be fetched to hei baby, heard the nurse calling her, and went off to the nursery. Countes; Marya went with her. The men went to the study, and Nikolinka Bolkonsky stole in, unnoticed by his uncle, and sat down at the writing- table, in the dark by the window.
‘Well, what are you going to do?’ said Denisov.
‘Everlastingly these fantastic schemes,’ said Nikolay.
‘Well,’ Pierre began, not sitting down, but pacing the room, and com-
IICI
WAR AND PEACE [' to an occasional standstill, lisping and gesticulating rapidly as he tked. ‘This is the position of things in Petersburg: the Tsar lets every- tng go. He is entirely wrapped up in this mysticism’ (mysticism Pierre cjld not forgive in anybody now). ‘All he asks for is peace; and he cn only get peace through these men of no faith and no conscience, who si stifling and destroying everything, Magnitsky and Araktcheev, and ttti quanti . . . You will admit that if you did not look after your pperty yourself, and only asked for peace and quiet, the crueller your liliff were, the more readily you would attain your object,’ he said, trning to Nikolay.
‘Well, but what is the drift of all this?’ said Nikolay.
‘Why, everything is going to ruin. Bribery in the law-courts, in the ;my nothing but coercion and drill: exile—people are being tortured, : d enlightenment is suppressed. Everything youthful and honourable— ■ey are crushing! Everybody sees that it can’t go on like this. The :rain is too great, and the string must snap,’ said Pierre (as men always a say, looking into the working of any government so long as govern- ents have existed). ‘I told them one thing in Petersburg.’
‘Told whom?’ asked Denisov.
