“Well, Baron Vasili, so the Italian cities of Genoa and Lucca are now just Napoleon’s family estates. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist named Napoleon—I really believe he is the Antichrist—then I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.”

It was in July 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna, a favorite of the Mother of the Tzar. With these words, she greeted Baron Vasili, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from a flu she called the grippe; “grippe” being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

All of Anna Pavlovna’s invitations, without exception, were written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:

“If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Baron), and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Anna Pavlovna.”

“Heavens! what an intense attack!” replied Baron Vasili, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. Baron Vasili spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presented to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa.

“First of all, dear Anna Pavlovna, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s mind at rest,” said Baron Vasili without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned.

“Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feelings?” said Anna Pavlovna. “You are staying the whole evening, I hope?”

“And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,” said Baron Vasili. “My daughter is coming for me to take me there.”

“I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.”

“If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off,” said Baron Vasili who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.

“Don’t tease! Well, what has been decided about General Novosíltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.”

“What can one say about it?” replied Baron Vasili in a cold, listless tone. “What has been decided? They have decided that Napoleon has “burnt his boats” as  a commitment to the war and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.”

Baron Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna, on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. Anna Pavlovna’s subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played around her lips, and expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.

During a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst out:

“Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign, the Tzar, recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the murder of the just one, Duc d’Enghien... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Tzar’s loftiness of soul. England has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive for our actions. What answer did General Novosíltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Tzar who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have the English promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Napoleon is invincible and that all of Europe is powerless before him... And I don’t believe a word that the Prussian statesman Hardenburg says, or statesman Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch, the Tzar. He will save Europe!”

Anna Pavlovna suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.

“I think,” said Baron Vasili with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our dear General Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?”

“In a moment. About that,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am expecting two very interesting men tonight, a viscount who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families. The viscount is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And also the Abbot Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Tzar. Had you heard?”

“I shall be delighted to meet them,” said Baron Vasili. “But tell me,” he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, “is it true that the Mother of the Tzar wants Baron Funke to be appointed as first secretary at Vienna? Baron Funke by all accounts is a poor creature.”

Baron Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, Anatole, but others were trying through the Mother of the Tzar to secure it for Baron Funke.

Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Mother of the Tzar desired or was pleased with.

“Baron Funke has been recommended to the Mother of the Tzar by her sister,” was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.

As she named the Mother of the Tzar, Anna Pavlovna’s face suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added that the Mother of the Tzar had deigned to show Baron Funke much respect, and again her face clouded over with sadness.

Baron Vasili was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and courtier-like quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man recommended to the Mother of the Tzar) and at the same time to console him, so she said:

“Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter, Helene, came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.”

Baron Vasili bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

“I often think,” Anna Pavlovna continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the Baron and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate conversation—“I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest son. I don’t like him,” she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. “Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.”

Anna Pavlovna smiled her ecstatic smile.

“I can’t help it,” said Baron Vasili. “The poet Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity.”

“Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am dissatisfied with Anatole? Between ourselves” (and her face assumed its melancholy expression), “he was mentioned at the Mother of the Tzar’s and you were pitied...”

Baron Vasili answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned.

“What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all a father could do for their education, and they have both turned out fools. My other son, Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference between them.” He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than usual so that the wrinkles around his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant.

“And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pavlovna, looking up pensively.

“I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be helped!”

Baron Vasili said no more but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.

“Have you never thought of marrying off your prodigal son, Anatole?” she asked. “They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a young woman who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Marya Bolkonski.”

Baron Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that he was considering this information.

“Do you know,” Baron Vasili said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of his thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,” he went on after a pause, “what will it be in five years if he goes on like this?” Presently he added: “That’s what we fathers have to put up with... Is this Marya of yours rich?”

“Marya’s father is very rich but stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-known Baron Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the late Tzar, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ Baron Bolkonski is very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl Marya is very unhappy. She has a brother named Andrei; I think you know him, he married his wife, Lise, lately. Andrei is an aide-de-camp of General Kutuzov’s and will be here tonight.”

“Listen, dear Anna Pavlovna,” said Baron Vasili, suddenly taking Anna‘s hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange a marriage between this rich heiress, Marya, and my son, Andrei, and I shall always be your most devoted slave (“slafe” with an “f”, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports). Marya is rich and of a good family and that’s all I want.”

And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, Baron Vasili raised Anna Pavlovna’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.

“Wait,” said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to Lise, Baron Bolkonski’s daughter-in-law, this very evening, and perhaps the marriage can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as a matchmaker.”

Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest St. Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Baron Vasili’s daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father to the ambassador’s entertainment; Helene wore a ball dress and her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Lise Bolkonski, known as “the most fascinating woman in St. Petersburg”, was also there. Lise had been married to her husband Andrei, during the previous winter, and being pregnant, Lise did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Baron Vasili’s second son, Hippolyte, had come with a viscount whom he introduced. The abbe and many others had also come.

To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, “You have not yet seen my aunt,” or “You do not know my aunt?” and very gravely conducted him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna mentioned each one’s name to her aunt and then left them.

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and silent approval. The elderly aunt spoke to each of the visitors in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of the Mother of the Tzar, “who, thank God, was better today.” And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

The young Lise had brought some needlework in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly and was especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect—the shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouth—seemed to be Lise’s own special and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones who looked at Lise, after being in her company and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that day.

Lise went round the table with quick, short, swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself and all around her. “I have brought my needlework,” said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present. “Mind, Anna Pavlovna, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,” she added, turning to her hostess. “You wrote that it was to be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.” And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.

“Stay calm, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,” replied Anna Pavlovna.

“Did you know,” said Lise in the same tone of voice and still in French, turning to a general, “that my husband, Andrei, is deserting me by going to war? He is going to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?” she added, addressing Baron Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.

“What a delightful woman this Lise is!” said Baron Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.

One of the next arrivals was Pierre, a stout, heavily built young man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. Pierre was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine the Great’s time who now lay dying in Moscow. Pierre had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room. But despite this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the place, came over Anna Pavlovna’s face when she saw him enter. Though Pierre was certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression that distinguished him from everyone else in that drawing room.

“It is very good of you, Pierre, to come and visit a poor invalid,” said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt as she conducted Pierre to her.

Pierre murmured something unintelligible and continued to look around as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt, he bowed to Lise with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.

Anna Pavlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the elderly aunt without waiting to hear her speech about the health of the Mother of the Tzar. Anna, in dismay, detained Pierre with the words: “Do you know the abbot? He is a most interesting man.”

“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and while it is very interesting it is hardly feasible.”

“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a double act of impoliteness. First, he had left the elderly aunt before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart, Pierre began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbot’s plan chimerical.

“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.

And having gotten rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, Anna Pavlovna resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch, ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. Like the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares, her anxiety about Pierre was evident. Anna Pavlovna kept an anxious watch on him when he approached the group around the viscount to listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbot.

Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the intellectual lights of St. Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present, Pierre was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last, he came up to the abbot. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing.

Anna Pavlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. Except for the aunt, beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed around the abbot. Another, of young people, was grouped around the beautiful Helene, Baron Vasili’s daughter, and Lise, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third group was gathered around the viscount and Anna Pavlovna.

The viscount was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d’hôtel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served up to her guests, first the viscount and then the abbot, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about the viscount immediately began discussing the murder of the Duc d’Enghien in France. The viscount said that the Duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity and that there were particular reasons for Napoleon’s hatred of him.

“Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, viscount,” said Anna Pavlovna, with a pleasant feeling that there was something in the manner of Louis XV in the sound of that sentence: “Do tell us all about it, viscount.”

The viscount bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group around him, inviting everyone to listen to his tale.

“The viscount knew the Duc d’Enghien personally,” whispered Anna Pavlovna to one of the guests. “The viscount is a wonderful raconteur,” said she to another. “How evidently he belongs to the best society,” said she to a third; and the viscount was served up to the company in the choicest and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef on a hot dish.

The viscount wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.

“Come over here, Helene, dear,” said Anna Pavlovna to the beautiful young Helene who was sitting some way off, the center of another group.

Helene smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with which she had first entered the room—the smile of a perfectly beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her, not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and shapely shoulders, back, and bosom—which in the fashion of those days were very much exposed—and she seemed to bring the glamour of a ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on the contrary, she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish its effect.

“How lovely!” said everyone who saw Helene; and the viscount lifted his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also with her unchanging smile.

“I doubt my ability before such an audience,” said the viscount, smilingly inclining his head.

Helene rested her bare round arm on a little table and considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and whenever the story produced an effect Helene glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor’s face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.

Lise had also left the tea table and followed Helene.

“Wait a moment, I’ll get my needlework... Now then, what are you thinking of?” Lise went on, turning to Helene’s brother, Hippolyte. “Fetch me my workbag.”

There was a general movement as Lise, smiling and talking merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in her seat.

“Now I am all right,” Lise said, and asking the viscount to begin, she took up her work.

Hippolyte, having brought Lise’s workbag, joined the circle and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.

The charmer Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary resemblance to his beautiful sister, Helene, but yet more by the fact that in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. Hippolyte’s features were like Helene’s, but while in her case everything was lit up by a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation, and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes, nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace, and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.

“It’s not going to be a ghost story?” Hippolyte said, sitting down beside Lise and hastily adjusting his opera glasses, as if without this instrument he could not begin to speak.

“Why no, my dear fellow,” said the astonished viscount, shrugging his shoulders.

“Because I hate ghost stories,” said Hippolyte in a tone that showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he had uttered them.

Hippolyte spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of the thigh of a frightened nymph, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.

The viscount told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then current, to the effect that the Duc d’Enghien had gone secretly to Paris to visit the famous actress, Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon Napoleon, who also enjoyed the actress’s favors, and that in his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits to which he was subject, and was thus at the Duc d’Enghien’s mercy. The Duc d’Enghien’s spared Napoleon, however, and this magnanimity Napoleon subsequently repaid by death.

 

The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies looked agitated.

“Charming!” said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at Lise.

“Charming!” whispered Lise sticking the needle into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of the story prevented her from going on with it.

The viscount appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a watchful eye on Pierre who so alarmed her, noticed that he was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbot, so she hurried to the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbot about the balance of power, and the abbot, evidently interested by the young man’s simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally, which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.

“The means are ... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of the people,” the abbot was saying. “It is only necessary for one powerful nation like Russia—barbaric as she is said to be—to place herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and by heading the alliance, Russia would save the world!”

“But how are you to get that balance?” Pierre was beginning.

At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at Pierre, asked the abbot how he stood the Russian climate. The abbot’s face instantly changed and assumed an offensively affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing with women.

“I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think of the climate,” said the abbot.

Not letting the abbot and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the larger circle.

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Andrei, Lise’s husband. Andrei was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet little wife, Lise. It was evident that Andrei not only knew everyone in the drawing room but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife, Lise. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pavlovna’s hand, and screwed up his eyes to scan the whole company.

“You are off to the war, Andrei?” said Anna Pavlovna.

“Yes. General Kutuzov,” said Andrei, speaking French and stressing the last syllable of the general’s name like a Frenchman, “has been pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...”

“And Lise, your wife?”

“She will go to the country.”

“Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?”

“Andrei,” said Lise, addressing her husband in the same coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, “the viscount has been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Napoleon!”

Andrei screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who from the moment Andrei entered the room had watched him with glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he looked around Andrei frowned again, expressing his annoyance with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre’s beaming face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.

“There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?” said Andrei to Pierre.

“I knew you would be here,” replied Pierre. “I will come to supper with you. May I?” he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the viscount who was continuing his story.

“No, impossible!” said Andrei, laughing and pressing Pierre’s hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished to say something more, but at that moment Baron Vasili and his daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.

“You must excuse me, dear viscount,” said Baron Vasili, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent his rising. “This unfortunate fete at the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to leave your enchanting party,” said Baron Vasili, turning to Anna Pavlovna.

Baron Vasili’s daughter, Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous, almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.

“Very lovely,” said Andrei.

“Very,” said Pierre.

In passing, Baron Vasili seized Pierre’s hand and said to Anna Pavlovna: “Educate this bear for me! Pierre has been staying with me for a whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.”

Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew Pierre’s father, Count Bezukhov, to be a connection of Baron Vasili’s. An elderly lady, Widow Drubetskoy, who had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook Baron Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had assumed had left her kindly and tear-worn face and it now expressed only anxiety and fear.

“How about my son, Boris, Baron Vasili?” said Widow Drubetskoy, hurrying after him into the anteroom. “I can’t remain any longer in St. Petersburg. Tell me what news I may take back to my poor boy.”

Although Baron Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to Widow Drubetskoy, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an ingratiating and appealing smile and took his hand that he might not go away.

“What would it cost you to say a word to the Tzar, and then Boris would be transferred to the Guards at once?” said Widow Drubetskoy.

“Believe me, I am ready to do all I can,” answered Baron Vasili, “but it is difficult for me to ask the Tzar. I should advise you to appeal to Chancellor Rumyántsev through Privy Councilor Golítsyn. That would be the best way.”

The elderly lady, Widow Drubetskoy, belonged to one of the best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of society had lost her former influential connections. She had now come to St. Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her only son, Boris. It was, in fact, solely to meet Baron Vasili that she had obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna’s reception and had sat listening to the viscount’s story. Baron Vasili’s words frightened her, an embittered look clouded her once beautiful face, but only for a moment; then she smiled again and clutched Baron Vasili’s arm more tightly.

“Listen to me, Baron Vasili,” said Widow Drubetskoy. “I have never yet asked you for anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my father’s friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God’s sake to do this for my son, Boris—and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,” she added hurriedly. “No, don’t be angry, but promise! I have already asked Privy Councilor Golítsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always were,” she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.

“Papa, we shall be late,” said Helene, turning her beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she stood waiting by the door.

Influence in society, however, is a capital that has to be economized if it is to last. Baron Vasili knew this, and having once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him, he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using his influence. But in Widow Drubetskoy’s case, he felt, after her second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded him of what was quite true; Baron Vasili had been indebted to her father for the first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners that she was one of those women—mostly mothers—who, having once made up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved him.

“My dear Widow Drubetskoy,” said Baron Vasili with his usual familiarity and weariness of tone, “it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask; but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father’s memory, I will do the impossible—your son Boris shall be transferred to the Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?”

“My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you—I knew your kindness!”

Baron Vasili turned to go.

“Wait—just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards...” Widow Drubetskoy faltered. “You are on good terms with General Kutuzov ... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at rest, and then...”

Baron Vasili smiled.

“No, I won’t promise that. You don’t know how General Kutuzov is pestered since his appointment. He told me himself that all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as adjutants.”

“No, but do promise! I won’t let you go! My dear benefactor...”

“Papa,” said his beautiful daughter, Helene, in the same tone as before, “we shall be late.”

“Well, goodbye! Goodbye! You hear her?”

“Then tomorrow you will speak to the Tzar?”

“Certainly; but about General Kutuzov, I don’t promise.”

“Do promise, do promise, Baron Vasili!” cried Widow Drubetskoy as he went, with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.

Apparently, Widow Drubetskoy had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as Baron Vasili had gone, her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She returned to the group where the viscount was still talking and again pretended to listen while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her task was accomplished.

“And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at Milan?” asked Anna Pavlovna, “and of the comedy of the people of the cities of Genoa and Lucca laying their petitions before Napoleon, and Napoleon sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one’s head whirl! It is as if the whole world had gone crazy.”

Andrei looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a sarcastic smile.

“‘God has given the crown to me, let him who touches it beware!’’ They say Napoleon was very grand when he said that,” Andrei remarked, repeating the words in Italian: “‘God has given the crown to me, let him who touches it beware!’’

“I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run over,” Anna Pavlovna continued. “The sovereigns of Europe will not be able to endure this man Napoleon who is a menace to everything.”

“The sovereigns of Europe? I do not speak of Russia,” said the viscount, polite but hopeless: “The sovereigns of Europe, madame... What have they done for the French King Louis XVII, for the Queen, or for the famous actress Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!” and the viscount became more animated. “And believe me, these sovereigns are reaping the reward of their betrayal of the French cause. The sovereigns of Europe! Why, they are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper Napoleon.”

And sighing disdainfully, the viscount again changed his position.

Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the viscount for some time through his opera glasses, suddenly turned completely round toward Lise, and having asked for a needle, began tracing the Conde coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much gravity as if she had asked him to do it.

“A bar of red running diagonally across three fleurs-de-lis on a background of blue—this is the Conde coat of arms,” said the viscount.

Lise listened, smiling.

“If Napoleon remains on the throne of France a year longer,” the viscount continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others but follows the current of his own thoughts, “things will have gone too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French society—I mean good French society—will have been forever destroyed, and then...”

The viscount shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna, who had him under observation, interrupted:

“The Tzar,” said Anna Pavlovna, with the melancholy which always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family, “has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from the usurper Napoleon, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the arms of its rightful king,” she concluded, trying to be amiable to the royalist emigrant, the viscount.

“That is doubtful,” said Andrei. “The viscount quite rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it will be difficult for France to return to the old regime.”

“From what I have heard,” said Pierre, blushing and breaking into the conversation, “almost all the French aristocracy has already gone over to Napoleon’s side.”

“It is the pro-Napoleon faction who says that,” replied the viscount without looking at Pierre. “At the present time, it is difficult to know the real state of French public opinion.”

“Napoleon has said so,” remarked Andrei with a sarcastic smile.

It was evident that Andrei did not like the viscount and was aiming his remarks at him, though without looking at him.

“‘I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,’” Andrei continued after a short silence, again quoting Napoleon’s words. “‘I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.’ I do not know, however, how far Napoleon was justified in saying so.”

“Not in the least,” replied the viscount. “After the murder of the Duc d’Enghien, even the most partial ceased to regard Napoleon as a hero. If to some people,” the viscount went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, “Napoleon ever was a hero, after the murder of the Duc d’Enghien there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth.”

Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation of the viscount’s epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.

“Napoleon’s execution of the Duc d’Enghien,” declared Pierre, “was a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole responsibility of that deed.”

“God! My God!” muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

“What, Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows greatness of soul?” said Lise, smiling and drawing her needlework nearer to her.

“Oh! Oh!” exclaimed several voices.

“Capital!” said Hippolyte in English, and began slapping his knee with the palm of his hand.

The viscount merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at his audience over his spectacles and continued.

“I say so,” Pierre continued desperately, “because the French nobility fled from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general good, Napoleon could not stop short for the sake of one man’s life.”

“Won’t you come over to the other table?” suggested Anna Pavlovna.

But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.

“No,” cried he, becoming more and more eager, “Napoleon is great because he rose above to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses, preserved all that was good in it—equality of citizenship and freedom of speech and of the press—and only for that reason did he obtain power.”

“Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to commit murder, Napoleon had restored the power to the rightful king, I should have called him a great man,” remarked the viscount.

“Napoleon could not do that. The people only gave him power so that he might rid them of the Bourbon kings and because they saw that he was a great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!” continued Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.

“What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that... But won’t you come to this other table?” repeated Anna Pavlovna.

“Rousseau’s Social Contract,” said the viscount with a tolerant smile.

“I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.”

“Yes, ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,” again interjected an ironical voice.

“Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in full force.”

“Liberty and equality,” said the viscount contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish Pierre’s words were, “high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Savior Jesus Christ preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. Our people in France wanted liberty, but Napoleon has destroyed it.”

Andrei kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the viscount and from the viscount to their hostess, Anna Pavlovna. In the first moment of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words had not exasperated the viscount, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to stop Pierre, she rallied her forces and joined the viscount in a vigorous attack on the orator.

“But, my dear Pierre,” said Anna Pavlovna, “how do you explain the fact of a great man executing a duke—or even an ordinary man who—is innocent and untried?”

“I should like,” said the viscount, “to ask how Pierre explains Napoleon’s coup; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the conduct of a great man!”

“And the prisoners Napoleon killed in Africa? That was horrible!” said Lise, shrugging her shoulders.

“Napoleon’s a low fellow, say what you will,” remarked Hippolyte.

Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When Pierre smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another—a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.

The viscount who was meeting Pierre for the first time saw clearly that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were silent.

“How do you expect him to answer you all at once?” said Andrei. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman, one has to distinguish between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as a Tzar. So it seems to me.”

“Yes, yes, of course!” Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this reinforcement.

“One must admit,” continued Andrei, “that Napoleon as a man was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but ... but there are other acts which it is difficult to justify.”

Andrei, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign to Lise that it was time to go.

Suddenly Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to pay attention, and asking them all to be seated began:

“I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it. Excuse me, viscount—I must tell it in Russian or the point will be lost...” And Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia. Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their attention to his story.

“There is in Moscow a lady, a grand woman, and she is very stingy. She must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also big. So the lady said...”

Here Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with difficulty.

“The grand lady said... Oh yes! She said to the maid, ‘Girl, put on a livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.’”

Here Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did however smile.

“The grand lady went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and her long hair came down...” Here Hippolyte could contain himself no longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: “And the whole world knew...”

And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why Hippolyte had told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, yet Anna Pavlovna and the others appreciated Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably ending Pierre’s unpleasant and awkward outburst. After the anecdote, the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and where.

Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests began to take their leave.

Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge red hands; Pierre did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own hat, the general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, until the general asked him to restore it. All of Pierre’s absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it were, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: “I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my dear Pierre.”

When Anna Pavlovna said this, Pierre did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, “Opinions are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am.” And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.

Andrei had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened indifferently to Lise’s chatter with Hippolyte who had also come into the hall. Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant Lise, and stared fixedly at her through his opera glasses.

“Go in, Anna Pavlovna, or you will catch a cold,” said Lise, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. “It is settled,” Lise added in a low voice.

Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she contemplated between Baron Vasili’s son, Anatole, and Lise’s sister-in-law, Marya.

“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone. “Write to Marya and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Goodbye! ”—and she left the hall.

Hippolyte approached Lise and, bending his face close to her, began to whisper something.

Two footmen, Lise’s and his own, stood holding a shawl and a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. The footmen listened to the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. Lise as usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.

“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s fete,” said Hippolyte. “So dull. It has been a delightful evening, has it not? Delightful!”

“They say the ball will be very good,” replied Lise, drawing up her downy little lip. “All the pretty women in society will be there.”

“Not all, for you will not be there; not all,” said Hippolyte smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom Hippolyte even pushed aside, he began wrapping it around Lise. Either from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the shawl had been adjusted, Hippolyte kept his arm around Lise for a long time, as though embracing her.

Still smiling, Lise gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at Andrei. His eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he seem.

“Are you ready?” Andrei asked his wife, opening his eyes and looking past her.

Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch following Lise, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.

“Lise, goodbye,” cried Hippolyte, stumbling with his tongue as well as with his feet.

Lise, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark carriage, Andrei was adjusting his saber; Hippolyte, under the pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.

“Allow me, sir,” said Andrei in Russian in a cold, disagreeable tone to Hippolyte who was blocking his path.

“I am expecting you, Pierre,” also called out Andrei, but gently and affectionately.

The carriage started, the wheels rattling. Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood on the porch waiting for the viscount whom he had promised to take home.

“Well, my dear,” said the viscount, having seated himself beside Hippolyte in his carriage, “your Lise is very nice, very nice indeed, quite French,” and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte burst out laughing.

“Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,” continued the viscount. “I pity the poor husband, Andrei, that little officer who gives himself the airs of a monarch.”

Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to know how to deal with them.”

 

Pierre, reaching the house first, went into Andrei’s study like one who was quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.

“What have you done to Anna Pavlovna? She will be quite ill now,” said Andrei, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.

Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager face to Andrei, smiled, and waved his hand.

“That abbot is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the right light... In my opinion, perpetual peace is possible but—I do not know how to express it ... not by a balance of political power...”

It was evident that Andrei was not interested in such an abstract conversation.

“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, my dear. Well, have you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a diplomatist?” asked Andrei after a momentary silence.

Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.

“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one career or the other.”

“But you must decide on something! Your father, Count Bezukhov, expects it.”

Pierre was the illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a very rich man. At the age of ten, Pierre had been sent abroad with a tutor and had remained away till he was twenty. When Pierre returned to Moscow, Count Bezukhov dismissed the tutor and said to Pierre, “Now go to St. Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to anything. Here is a letter to Baron Vasili, and here is money. Write to me all about it, and I will help you with everything.” Pierre had already been choosing a career for three months and had not decided on anything. It was about this choice that Andrei was speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.

“But he must be a Freemason,” said Pierre, referring to the optimistic abbot whom he had met that evening.

“That is all nonsense.” Andrei again interrupted him, “let us talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”

“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it was a war for freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army; but to help England and Austria against Napoleon, the greatest man in the world, is not right.”

Andrei only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would have been difficult to give any other answer than the one Andrei gave to this naive question.

“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” Andrei said.

“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.

Andrei smiled ironically.

“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about...”

“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.

“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that, I am going...” Andrei paused. “I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!”

The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Andrei shook himself as if waking up and his face assumed the look it had had in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. Lise came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Andrei rose and politely placed a chair for her.

“How is it,” Lise began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Anna Pavlovna never got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense of women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Pierre!”

“And I am still arguing with Andrei. I can’t understand why he wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing Lise with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their discussions with young women.

Lise started. Evidently, Pierre’s words touched her to the quick.

“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said Lise. “I don’t understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here Andrei is my uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well known, and so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Andrei?’ I did indeed.” Lise laughed. “He is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Tzar. You know the Tzar spoke to Andrei most graciously. Anna Pavlovna and I were speaking about how to arrange such a position. What do you think?”

Pierre looked at Andrei and, noticing that he did not like the conversation, gave no reply.

“When are you leaving?” Pierre asked.

“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken of,” said Lise in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member. “Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken off ... and then you know, Andrei...” (she looked significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.

Andrei looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of frigid politeness.

“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.

“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, Andrei leaves me and locks me up alone in the country.”

“With my father and sister, remember,” said Andrei gently.

“Alone all the same, without my friends... And Andrei expects me not to be afraid.”

Lise’s tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.

“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Andrei slowly, not taking his eyes off Lise.

She blushed and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.

“No, Andrei, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have...”

“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Andrei. “You had better go.”

Lise said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered. Andrei rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.

Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.

“Why should I mind Pierre being here?” exclaimed Lise suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrei, why you have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to war and have no pity for me. Why is it?”

“Lise!” was all Andrei said. But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:

“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave like that six months ago?”

“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Andrei still more emphatically.

Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to all this, rose and approached Lise. He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.

“Calm yourself, Lise! It seems so to you because... I assure you I myself have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here... No, don’t distress yourself... Goodbye!”

Andrei caught him by the hand.

“No, wait, Pierre! Lise is too kind to wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”

“No, Andrei thinks only of himself,” muttered Lise without restraining her angry tears.

“Lise!” said Andrei dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.

Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression on Lise’s pretty face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes glanced askance at Andrei’s face, and her own assumed the timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its drooping tail.

“My God, my God!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one hand she went up to Andrei and kissed him on the forehead.

“Good night, Lise,” said Andrei, rising and courteously kissing her hand as he would have done to a stranger.

Pierre and Andrei were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre continually glanced at Andrei; Andrei rubbed his forehead with his small hand.

“Let us go and have supper,” Andrei said with a sigh, going to the door.

They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.

Halfway through supper, Andrei leaned his elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk—as one who has long had something on his mind and suddenly ia determined to speak out.

“Never, never marry, my dear Pierre! That’s my advice: never marry till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an idiot!... But what’s the good?...” Andrei said as he waved his arm.

Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend in amazement.

“My wife,” continued Andrei, “is an excellent woman, one of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, oh, God, what would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to whom I mention this because I like you.”

As he said this, Andrei was less than ever like that man who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid irritation.

“You don’t understand why I say this,” Andrei continued, “but it is the whole story of life. You talk of Napoleon and his career,” said he (though Pierre had not mentioned Napoleon), “but Napoleon, when he worked, went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and triviality—these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic wit,” continued Andrei, “and at Anna Pavlovna’s they listen to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial in everything—that’s what women are when you see them in their true colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were something in them, but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don’t marry, my dear fellow; don’t marry!” concluded Andrei.

“It seems funny to me,” said Pierre, “that you, you should consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have everything before you, everything. And you...”

Pierre did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he thought of Andrei and how much he expected of him in the future.

“How can Andrei talk like that?” thought Pierre. He considered his friend a model of perfection because Andrei possessed in the highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, which might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always astonished at Andrei’s calm manner of treating everybody, his extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything, knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck by Andrei’s lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a defect but as a sign of strength.

Even in the best, most friendly, and simplest relations of life, praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary to wheels so that they may run smoothly.

“My part is played out,” said Andrei. “What’s the use of talking about me? Let us talk about you,” he added after a silence, smiling at his reassuring thoughts.

That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre’s face.

“But what is there to say about me?” said Pierre, his face relaxing into a careless, merry smile. “What am I? An illegitimate son!” He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a great effort to say this. “Without a name and without means... And it really...” But he did not say what “it really” was. “For the present, I am free and am all right. Only I haven’t the least idea what I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously.”

Andrei looked kindly at him, yet his glance—friendly and affectionate as it was—expressed a sense of his own superiority.

“I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among our whole set. Yes, you’re all right! Choose what career you will; it’s all the same. You’ll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up visiting those like Baron Vasili and his family and leading that sort of life. It suits you so badly—all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!”

“What would you have, my dear fellow?” answered Pierre, shrugging his shoulders. “Women, my dear fellow; women!”

“I don’t understand it,” replied Andrei. “Women who are correct in behavior, that’s a different matter; but Baron Vasili’s family, his set of women, ‘women and wine’, I don’t understand!”

Pierre was staying at Baron Vasili’s and sharing the dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to reform by marrying him to Andrei’s sister, Marya.

“Do you know?” said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy thought, “seriously, I have long been thinking of it... Leading such a life I can’t decide or think properly about anything. One’s head aches and one spends all one’s money. Anatole asked me to go out tonight, but I won’t go.”

“You give me your word of honor not to go?”

“On my honor!”

It was past one o’clock when Pierre left Andrei. It was a cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to Anatole’s house the more he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre remembered that Anatole was expecting the usual set for cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout, finishing with visits with prostitutes, visits of which Pierre was very fond.

“I should like to go to Anatole’s,” thought Pierre.

But he immediately recalled his promise to Andrei not to go there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately occurred to him that his promise to Andrei was of no account because before he gave it he had already promised Anatole to come to his gathering; “Besides,” thought Pierre, “all such ‘words of honor’ are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all the same!” Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort, nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Anatole’s.

Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards’ barracks in which Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the distance.

Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices, the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine young men were crowding anxiously around an open window. Three others were romping with a young bear, one pulling the bear by his chain and trying to set him at the others.

“I bet a hundred on the Englishman!” shouted one.

“Remember, no holding on!” cried another.

“I bet on Dolokhov!” cried a third. “Anatole, you part our hands.”

“There, leave the bear alone; here’s a bet on.”

“At one draught, or he loses!” shouted a fourth.

“Footman, bring a bottle!” shouted Anatole, a tall, handsome fellow who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine linen shirt unfastened in front. “Wait a bit, you fellows... Here is Pierre! Good man!”

Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes, particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober ring, cried from the window: “Come here; part the bets!” This was Dolokhov, an officer, a notorious gambler, and duelist, who was living with Anatole.

Pierre smiled, looking about him merrily.

“I don’t understand. What’s it all about?”

“Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here,” said Anatole, and taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.

“First of all, you must drink!”

Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows at the tipsy guests who were again crowding around the window, and listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre’s glass while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with an English naval officer that he could drink an entire bottle of rum while sitting on the outer ledge of the third-floor window with his legs hanging out.

“Go on, you must drink it all,” said Anatole, giving Pierre the last glass, “or I won’t let you go!”

“No, I won’t,” said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to the window.

Dolokhov was holding the Englishman’s hand and clearly and distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself, particularly to Anatole and Pierre.

Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers, he wore no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles played continually around the two corners of the mouth; this, together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes, produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face. Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank, he never lost his clear-headedness. Both Anatole and Dolokhov were at that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of St. Petersburg.

The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two footmen, who were evidently flustered and intimidated by the directions and shouts of the gentlemen around.

Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame, but could not move it. Anatole smashed a pane.

“You have a try, big man,” said Anatole, turning to Pierre.

Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and suddenly wrenched the oak frame out with a crash.

“Take the frame right out, or they’ll think I’m holding on,” said Dolokhov.

“Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?” said Anatole.

“First-rate,” said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.

Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the window sill. “Listen!” he cried, standing there and addressing those in the room. All were silent.

“I bet fifty imperials”—Dolokhov spoke French so that the Englishman might understand him, but he did not speak it very well—“I bet fifty imperials ... or do you wish to make it a hundred?” added he, addressing the Englishman.

“No, fifty,” replied the Englishman.

“All right. Fifty imperials ... that I will drink a whole bottle of rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on this spot” (Dolokhov stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the window) “and without holding on to anything. Is that right?”

“Quite right,” said the Englishman.

Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the buttons of his coat and looking down at him—the Englishman was short—began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.

“Wait!” cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill to attract attention. “Wait a bit, Anatole. Listen! If anyone else does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?”

The Englishman nodded but gave no indication whether he intended to accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on translating Dolokhov’s words into English. A thin young lad, a hussar of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the window sill, leaned over, and looked down.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” he muttered, looking down from the window at the stones of the pavement.

“Shut up!” cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.

Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was already quite light. Dolokhov’s back in his white shirt, and his curly head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov’s shirt.

“I say, this is folly! He’ll be killed,” said this more sensible man.

Anatole stopped him.

“Don’t touch him! You’ll startle him and then he will be killed. Eh?... What then?... Eh?”

Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands, arranged himself on his seat.

“If anyone comes meddling again,” said Dolokhov, emitting the words separately through his thin compressed lips, “I will throw him down there. Now then!”

Saying this Dolokhov again turned round, dropped his hands, took the bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov’s back. Anatole stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways, pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still. Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting yet further back. “Why is it so long?” thought Pierre. It seemed to him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously; this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the sloping ledge. As Dolokhov began slipping down, his head and arm wavered still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered his eyes and thought he would never open them again. Suddenly Pierre was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.

“It’s empty.”

Dolokhov threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.

“Well done!... Fine fellow!... There’s a bet for you!... Devil take you!” came from different sides.

The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Then Pierre jumped upon the window sill.

“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!” Pierre suddenly cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it... Bring a bottle!”

“Let Pierre do it, let him do it,” said Dolokhov, smiling.

“What next? Have you gone mad, Pierre?... No one would let you!... Why, you go dizzy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.

“I’ll drink it! Let’s have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the window.

They seized Pierre by his arms, but he was so strong that everyone who touched him was sent flying.

“No, you’ll never manage Pierre that way,” said Anatole. “Wait a bit and I’ll get round him... Listen! Pierre, I’ll take your bet tomorrow, but now we are all going to ——’s.”

“Come on then,” cried Pierre. “Come on!... And we’ll take the bear with us.”

And Pierre caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground, and began dancing round the room with it.

Baron Vasili kept the promise he had given to Widow Drubetskoy who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on the evening of Anna Pavlovna’s soiree. The matter was mentioned to the Tzar, an exception was made, and Boris was transferred into the regiment of Semënov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no appointment to General Kutuzov’s staff despite all of Widow Drubetskoy’s endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna’s reception, Widow Drubetskoy returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and where her darling Boris, who had only just entered a regiment of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a time. The Semënov Guards had already left St. Petersburg on the tenth of August, and Boris, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join them on the march to Radzivílov.

It was St. Natalia’s day and the name day of two of the Rostov family—the mother and the youngest daughter—both named Natasha. Ever since the morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going continually, bringing visitors to Countess Rostov’s big house on Povarskáya Boulevard, so well-known to all of Moscow. Countess Rostov herself and her handsome eldest daughter, Vera, were in the drawing room with the visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one another in relays.

Countess Rostov was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing—she had had twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a distinguished air that inspired respect. Widow Drubetskoy, who as a member of the household was also seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. Count Rostov met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.

“I am very, very grateful to you, my dear”—Count Rostov called everyone without exception and without the slightest variation in his tone, “my dear,” whether they were above or below him in rank—“I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be offended, my dear! On behalf of the whole family, I beg you to come, my dear!” These words Count Rostov repeated to everyone without exception or variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful, clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair toward him or her, and jauntily spread out his legs and put his hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, Count Rostov would call Dmítri, a man of good family and the manager of all his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table would say: “Well, Dmítri, you’ll see that things are all as they should be? That’s right! The great thing is the serving, that’s it.” And with a complacent sigh, he would return to the drawing room.

Countess Rostov’s gigantic footman entered the drawing room and in his bass voice announced that they had more visitors. Countess Rostov reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with her husband’s portrait on it.

“I’m quite worn out by these callers. However, I’ll see them and no more. The mother is so affected. Ask them in,” she said to the footman in a sad voice, as if saying: “Very well, finish me off.”

A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.

“Dear Countess Rostov, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child ... at the Razumóvski’s ball ... and Countess Apráksina ... I was so delighted...” came the sounds of animated feminine voices, interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which lasted out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of dresses and say, “I am so delighted... Mamma’s health... and Countess Apráksina...” and then, again rustling, pass into the anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and celebrated beau of Catherine the Great’s day, Count Bezukhov, and about his illegitimate son, Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna Pavlovna’s reception.

“I am so sorry for poor Count Bezukhov,” said the visitor. “He is in such bad health, and now this vexation about his son, Pierre, is enough to kill him!”

“What is that?” asked Countess Rostov as if she did not know what the visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of Count Bezukhov’s distress some fifteen times.

“That’s what comes of a modern education,” exclaimed the visitor. “It seems that while Pierre was abroad he was allowed to do as he liked, now in St. Petersburg, I hear he has been doing such terrible things that he has been expelled by the police.”

“You don’t say so!” replied Countess Rostov.

“Pierre chose his friends badly,” interposed Widow Drubetskoy. “Anatole, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it. Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Pierre sent back to Moscow. Baron Vasili managed somehow to get his son Anatole’s affair hushed up, but even Anatole was ordered out of St. Petersburg.”

“But what have they been up to?” asked Countess Rostov.

“They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov,” replied the visitor. “Dolokhov is a son of a worthy woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the policeman on his back!”

“What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!” shouted Count Rostov, dying with laughter.

“Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it?”

Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.

“It was all they could do to rescue the poor man,” continued the visitor. “And to think it is Count Bezukhov’s son, Pierre, who amuses himself in this sensible manner! And Pierre was said to be so well-educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite declined: I have my daughters to consider.”

“Why do you say this young man, Pierre, is so rich?” asked Countess Rostov, turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of inattention. “Count Bezukhov’s children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also is illegitimate.”

The visitor made a gesture with her hand.

“I should think Count Bezukhov has a score of them.”

Widow Drubetskoy intervened in the conversation, evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went on in society.

“The fact of the matter is,” said Widow Drubetskoy significantly, and also in a half whisper, “everyone knows Count Bezukhov’s reputation... He has lost count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite.”

“How handsome Count Bezukhov was still was only a year ago!” remarked Countess Rostov. “I have never seen a more handsome man.”

“Count Bezukhov is very much altered now,” said Widow Drubetskoy. “Well, as I was saying, Baron Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but Count Bezukhov is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to the Tzar about him; so that in the case of his death—and he is so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from St. Petersburg—no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune, Pierre or Baron Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of rubles! I know it all very well for Baron Vasili told me himself. Besides, Pierre is my mother’s second cousin. Count Bezukhov is also my son Boris’s godfather,” Widow Drubetskoy added as if she attached no importance at all to the fact.

“Baron Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on some inspection business,” remarked the visitor.

“Yes, but between ourselves,” said Widow Drubetskoy, “that is a pretext. The fact is that Baron Vasili has come to see Count Bezukhov, hearing how ill he is.”

“But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke,” said Count Rostov; and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. “I can just imagine what a funny figure that policeman cut!”

And as Count Rostov waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. “So do come and dine with us!” he said.

Silence ensued. Countess Rostov looked at her callers, smiling affably, but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they now rose and took their leave. The visitor’s daughter was already smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a girl of thirteen, Natasha, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was evident that Natasha had not intended her flight to bring her so far. Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.

Count Rostov jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his arms wide and threw them around the little girl, Natasha, who had run in.

“Ah, here she is!” he exclaimed laughing. “Natasha, my pet, whose name day it is. My dear pet!”

“My dear, there is a time for everything,” said Countess Rostov with feigned severity. “You spoil her,” she added, turning to her husband.

“How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your name day,” said the visitor. “What a charming child,” she added, addressing Countess Rostov.

Natasha, this black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life—with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers—was just at that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her flushed face in the lace of her mother’s mantilla—not paying the least attention to her severe remark—and began to laugh. Natasha laughed, and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll that she produced from the folds of her frock.

“Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see...” was all Natasha managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.

“Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you,” said Countess Rostov, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and turning to the visitor she added: “Natasha is my youngest girl.”

Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother’s shawl, glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.

The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it necessary to take some part in it.

“Tell me, my dear,” said the visitor to Natasha, “is your doll Mimi a relation of yours? A daughter, I suppose?”

Natasha did not like the visitor’s tone of condescension to childish things. Natasha did not reply but looked at her seriously.

Meanwhile, the younger generation: Boris, the officer (Widow Drubetskoy’s son); Nicholas, the undergraduate (Count Rostov’s eldest son); Sonya, Count Rostov’s fifteen-year-old orphan niece, and little Petya, his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the conversation had been more amusing than the drawing room talk of society scandals, the weather, and the visitors. Now and then the young people glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.

The two young men, Boris and Nicholas, friends from childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find something to say but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had known Natasha’s doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady before her nose was broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and how her head had cracked right across the skull. When Boris said this, Nicholas glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her younger brother, Petya, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet would carry her. Boris did not laugh.

“You were meaning to go out, weren’t you, Mamma? Do you want the carriage?” Boris asked his mother with a smile.

“Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready,” Widow Drubetskoy answered, returning his smile.

Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. Petya ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been disturbed.

The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting the young lady visitor and Countess Rostov’s eldest daughter, Vera (who was four years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the orphan niece. Sonya was a slender little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice around her head, and a tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a pretty, half-grown kitten that promises to become a beautiful little cat. The orphan niece Sonya evidently considered it proper to show an interest in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy and again play with her cousin, Nicholas, as soon as they too could, like Natasha and Boris, escape from the drawing room.

“Ah yes, my dear,” said Count Rostov, addressing the visitor and pointing to Nicholas, “Nicholas’s friend Boris has become an officer, and so for friendship’s sake Nicholas, too, is leaving the university and me, and entering the military service. And there was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department! Isn’t that friendship?” remarked Count Rostov in an inquiring tone.

“But they say that war has been declared,” replied the visitor.

“They’ve been saying so a long while,” said Count Rostov, “and they’ll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My dear, there’s friendship for you,” he repeated. “Nicholas is joining the hussars.”

The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.

“It’s not at all from friendship with Boris,” declared Nicholas, flaring up and turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. “It is not from friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation.”

Nicholas glanced at Boris and the young lady visitor, and they were both regarding him with a smile of approbation.

“Schubert, the colonel in the hussars, is dining with us today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him. It can’t be helped!” said Count Rostov, shrugging his shoulders and speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.

“I have already told you, Papa,” said Nicholas, “that if you don’t wish to let me go, I’ll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.—I don’t know how to hide what I feel.” As Nicholas spoke he kept glancing with the flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at the orphan niece Sonya and the young lady visitor.

Natasha, the little kitten, feasting her eyes on Nicholas, seemed ready at any moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.

“All right, all right!” said Count Rostov. “Nicholas always flares up! Napoleon has turned everyone’s heads; they all think of how he rose from an ensign and became the leader of France. Well, well, God grant it,” he added, not noticing his visitor’s sarcastic smile.

The elders began talking about Napoleon. The visitor’s daughter turned to Nicholas.

“What a pity you weren’t at the Arkhárovs’ on Thursday. It was so dull without you,” said she, giving him a tender smile.

Nicholas, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish smile and engaged the smiling visitor in a confidential conversation without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the heart of the orphan Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of his talk, Nichola glanced around at Sonya. She gave him a passionately angry glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All of Nicholas’ animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find Sonya.

“How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!” said Widow Drubetskoy, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. “Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood,” she added.

“Yes,” said Countess Rostov when the brightness these young people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no one had put but which was always in her mind, “and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both for girls and boys.”

“It all depends on the bringing up,” remarked the visitor.

“Yes, you’re quite right,” continued Countess Rostov. “Till now I have always, thank God, been my children’s friend and had their full confidence,” said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them. “I know I shall always be my daughters’ first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can’t help it), he will all the same never be like those St. Petersburg young men.”

“Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters,” chimed in Count Rostov who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. “Just fancy: Nicholas wants to be a hussar. What’s one to do, my dear?”

“What a charming creature your younger girl, Natasha, is,” said the visitor; “a little volcano!”

“Yes, Natasha is a regular volcano,” said Count Rostov. “Takes after me! And what a voice she has; though she’s my daughter, I tell the truth when I say she’ll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons.”

“Isn’t she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it at that age.”

“Oh no, not at all too young!” replied Count Rostov. “Why, our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen.”

“And Natasha’s in love with Boris already. Just fancy!” said Countess Rostov with a gentle smile, looking at Boris. She went on, evidently concerned with a thought that always occupied her: “Now you see if I were to be severe with her and to forbid it ... goodness knows what they might be up to on the sly” (she meant that they would be kissing), “but as it is, I know every word she utters. Natasha will come running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything. Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With Vera, I was stricter.”

“Yes, I was brought up quite differently,” remarked the Rostov’s handsome elder daughter, Vera, with a smile.

But the smile did not enhance Vera’s beauty as smiles generally do; on the contrary, it gave her an unnatural, and therefore unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid, quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone—the visitors and countess alike—turned to look at her as if wondering why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.

“People are always too clever with their eldest children and try to make something exceptional of them,” said the visitor.

“What’s the good of denying it, my dear? My wife was too clever with Vera,” said Count Rostov. “Well, what of that? She’s turned out splendidly all the same,” he added, winking at Vera.

The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to dinner.

“What manners! I thought they would never go,” said Countess Rostov, when she had seen her guests out.

When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not coming at once, when she heard the young man’s discreet steps approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly among the flower tubs and hid there.

Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked around, brushed a little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha was about to call him but changed her mind. “Let him look for me,” thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears, and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place, watching—as under an invisible cap—to see what went on in the world. She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering to herself, kept looking around toward the drawing-room door. It opened and Nicholas came in.

“Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?” said Nicholas, running up to her.

“It’s nothing, nothing; leave me alone!” sobbed Sonya.

“Ah, I know what it is.”

“Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to the pretty young visitor you were staring at!”

“Só-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like that, for a mere fancy?” said Nicholas taking her hand.

Sonya did not pull it away and she stopped crying.

Natasha, not stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with sparkling eyes. “What will happen now?” thought she.

“Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are everything!” said Nicholas. “And I will prove it to you.”

“I don’t like you to talk like that.”

“Well, then, I won’t; only forgive me, Sonya!” He drew her to him and kissed her.

“Oh, how nice,” thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had gone out of the conservatory Natasha followed and called Boris to her.

“Boris, come here,” said Natasha with a sly and significant look. “I have something to tell you. Here, here!” and she led him into the conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.

Boris followed her, smiling.

“What is the something?” asked Boris.

She grew confused, glanced around, and, seeing the doll she had thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.

“Kiss the doll,” said Natasha.

Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face but did not reply.

“Don’t you want to? Well, then, come here,” said she, and went further in among the plants and threw down the doll. “Closer, closer!” she whispered.

She caught the young Boris by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity and fear appeared on her flushed face.

“And me? Would you like to kiss me?” she whispered almost inaudibly, glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying from excitement.

Boris blushed.

“How funny you are!” he said, bending down to her and blushing still more, but he waited and did nothing.

Suddenly Natasha jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and, tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.

Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of the tubs and stood, hanging her head.

“Natasha,” Boris said, “you know that I love you, but...”

“You are in love with me?” Natasha broke in.

“Yes, I am, but please don’t let us act like that... In another four years ... then I will ask for your hand.”

Natasha considered.

“Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,” she counted on her slender little fingers. “All right! Then it’s settled?”

A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.

“Settled!” replied Boris.

“Forever?” said the little girl. “Till death itself?”

Natasha took Boris’s arm and with a happy face went with him into the adjoining sitting room.

After receiving her visitors, Countess Rostov was so tired that she gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to invite to dinner all who came “to congratulate.” Countess Rostov wished to have a tête-à-tête talk with the friend of her childhood, Widow Drubetskoy, whom she had not seen properly since she returned from St. Petersburg. Widow Drubetskoy, with her tear-worn but pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of Countess Rostov.

“With you, I will be quite frank,” said Widow Drubetskoy. “There are not many left of us old friends! That’s why I so value your friendship.”

Widow Drubetskoy looked at Vera and paused. Countess Rostov pressed Widow Drubetskoy’s hand.

“Vera!” Countess Rostov said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a favorite, “How is it you have so little tact? Don’t you see you are not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or...”

The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all hurt.

“If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone,” Vera replied as she left to go to her room.

But as Vera passed the sitting room she noticed two couples sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully. Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.

It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love, but apparently, the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.

“How often have I asked you not to take my things?” Vera said. “You have a room of your own,” and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.

“In a minute, in a minute,” Nicholas said, dipping his pen.

“You always manage to do things at the wrong time,” continued Vera. “You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt ashamed of you.”

Though what Vera said was quite fair, perhaps for that very reason no one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered in the room with the inkstand in her hand.

“And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and Boris, or between you two? It’s all nonsense!”

“Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?” said Natasha in defense, speaking very gently.

Natasha seemed that day to be more kind and affectionate than ever to everyone.

“Very silly,” said Vera. “I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!”

“Everyone has secrets of their own,” answered Natasha, getting warmer. “We don’t interfere with you and Berg.”

“I should think not,” said Vera, “because there can never be anything wrong in my behavior. But I’ll just tell Mamma how you are behaving with Boris.”

“Natasha behaves very well to me,” remarked Boris. “I have nothing to complain of.”

“Don’t, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really tiresome,” said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly. (She used the word “diplomat,” which was just then much in vogue among the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) “Why does she bother me?” And Natasha added, turning to Vera, “You’ll never understand it because you’ve never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a Madame de Genlis and nothing more” (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by Nicholas, was considered very stinging), “and your greatest pleasure is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you please,” Natasha finished quickly.

“I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors...”

“Well, now you’ve done what you wanted,” put in Nicholas—“you’ve said unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. We’re going to go to the nursery.”

All four young people, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.

“The unpleasant things were said to me,” remarked Vera, “I said none to anyone.”

“Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!” shouted laughing voices through the door.

The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still colder and calmer.

 

In the drawing-room, the conversation was still going on.

“Ah, my dear,” said Countess Rostov, “my life is not all roses either. Don’t I know that at the rate we are living our means won’t last long? It’s all the Club and Count Rostov’s easygoing nature. Even in the country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what besides! But don’t let’s talk about me; tell me how you managed everything. I often wonder at you, Widow Drubetskoy—how at your age you can rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to St. Petersburg, to those ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It’s quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn’t possibly do it.”

“Ah, my love,” answered Widow Drubetskoy, “God grant you never know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you love to distraction! One learns many things then,” she added with a certain pride. “That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of those big people I write a note: ‘Baroness So-and-So desires an interview with So-and-So,’ and then I take a cab and go myself two, three, or four times—till I get what I want. I don’t mind what they think of me.”

“Well, and to whom did you plead about your son, Boris?” asked Countess Rostov. “You see Boris as already an officer in the Guards, while my Nicholas is going as a mere cadet. There’s no one to champion Nicholas for him. To whom did you apply?”

“To Baron Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to everything, and put the matter before the Tzar,” said Widow Drubetskoy enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she had endured to gain her end.

“Has Baron Vasili aged much?” asked Countess Rostov. “I have not seen him since we acted together at the Rumyántsovs’ theatricals. I expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attention in those days,” said Countess Rostov, with a smile.

“Baron Vasili is just the same as ever,” replied Widow Drubetskoy, “overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head at all. He said to me, ‘I am sorry I can do so little for you, Widow Drubetskoy. I am at your command.’ Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very kind relation. But you know my love for my son: I would do anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way that my position is now a terrible one,” continued Widow Drubetskoy, sadly, dropping her voice. “My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don’t know how to equip Boris.” She took out her handkerchief and began to cry. “I need five hundred rubles and have only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state... My only hope now is in Count Bezukhov. If he will not assist his godson—you know he is Boris’s godfather—and allow him something for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away... I shall not be able to equip him.”

Countess Rostov’s eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.

“I often think, though, perhaps it’s a sin,” said Widow Drubetskoy, “that here lives Count Bezukhov so rich, all alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It’s a burden to him, and Boris’s life is only just beginning...”

“Surely Count Bezukhov will leave something to Boris,” said Countess Rostov.

“Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish. Still, I will take Boris and go to see Count Bezukhov at once, and I shall speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it’s really all the same to me when Boris’s fate is at stake.” Widow Drubetskoy rose. “It’s now two o’clock and you dine at four. There will just be time.”

And like a practical St. Petersburg lady who knows how to make the most of time, Widow Drubetskoy sent someone to call Boris and went into the anteroom with him.

“Good-by, my dear,” said Widow Drubetskoy to Countess Rostov who saw her to the door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, “Wish me good luck.”

“Are you going to Count Bezukhov’s home, my dear?” said Count Rostov coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added: “If he is better, ask his son, Pierre, to dine with us. Pierre has been to the house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite him, my dear. We will see how Count Rostov distinguishes himself today. He says Count Orlóv never gave such a dinner as ours will be!”

“My dear Boris,” said Widow Drubetskoy to her son, Boris, as Countess Rostov’s carriage in which they were seated drove over the straw-covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Pierre’s house. “My dear Boris,” said the mother, drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and tenderly on her son’s arm, “be affectionate and attentive to him. Count Bezukhov is your godfather after all, and your future depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you so well know how to be.”

“If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of it...” answered Boris coldly. “But I have promised and will do it for your sake.”

Although the hall porter saw someone’s carriage standing at the entrance, after scrutinizing Widow Drubetskoy and Boris (who without asking to be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the Widow Drubetskoy’s old cloak, the hall porter asked whether they wanted Count Bezukhov or Katerina or her sisters, and, hearing that they wished to see Count Bezukhov, said his excellency was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.

“We may as well go back,” said Boris in French.

“My dear!” exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.

Boris said no more but looked inquiringly at his mother without taking off his cloak.

“My friend,” said Widow Drubetskoy in gentle tones, addressing the hall porter, “I know Count Bezukhov is very ill... that’s why I have come... I am a relative. I shall not disturb him, my friend... I only need to see Baron Vasili: he is staying here, is he not? Please announce me.”

The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs and turned away.

“Widow Drubetskoy to see Baron Vasili,” he called to a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat, who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.

Widow Drubetskoy smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.

“My dear,” Widow Drubetskoy said to Boris, once more stimulating him by a touch, “you promised me!”

Boris, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.

They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to the apartments assigned to Baron Vasili.

Just as Widow Drubetskoy and Boris, having reached the middle of the hall, were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and Baron Vasili came out—wearing a velvet coat with a single star on his breast, as was his custom when at home—taking leave of a good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated St. Petersburg doctor, Dr. Lorrain.

“Then it is certain?” said Baron Vasili.

“Baron, to err is human, but...” replied the doctor, swallowing his r’s, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.

“Very well, very well...”

Seeing Widow Drubetskoy and her son, Baron Vasili dismissed the doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of inquiry. Boris noticed that an expression of profound sorrow suddenly clouded his mother’s face, and he smiled slightly.

“Ah, Baron Vasili! In what sad circumstances do we meet again! And how is our dear invalid, Count Bezukhov?” said Widow Drubetskoy, as though unaware of the cold offensive look fixed on her.

Baron Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Baron Vasili without acknowledging the bow turned to Widow Drubetskoy, answering her query by a movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for Count Bezukhov.

“Is it possible?” exclaimed Widow Drubetskoy. “Oh, how awful! It is terrible to think... This is my son,” she added, indicating Boris. “He wanted to thank you himself.”

Boris bowed again politely.

“Believe me, Baron Vasili, a mother’s heart will never forget what you have done for us.”

“I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Widow Drubetskoy,” said Baron Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in tone and manner, here in Moscow to this woman whom he had placed under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than he had done in St. Petersburg at Anna Pavlovna’s reception.

“Try to serve well and show yourself worthy,” added Baron Vasili, addressing Boris with severity. “I am glad... Are you here on leave?” Baron Vasili went on in his usual tone of indifference.

“I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,” replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at Baron Vasili’s brusque manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so quietly and respectfully that Baron Vasili gave him a searching glance.

“Are you living with your mother?”

“No, I am living at Countess Rostov’s,” replied Boris, again adding, “your excellency.”

“That is, with Count and Countess Rostov,” said Widow Drubetskoy.

“I know, I know,” answered Baron Vasili in his monotonous voice. “I never could understand how she made up her mind to marry that young bear, Count Rostov! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler too, I am told.”

“But Count Rostov is a very kind man, Baron Vasili,” said Widow Drubetskoy with a pathetic smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure, but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. “What do the doctors say about Count Bezukhov?” asked Widow Drubetskoy after a pause, her worn face again expressing deep sorrow.

“They give little hope,” replied Baron Vasili.

“And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me and Boris. Boris is Count Bezukhov’s godson,” she added, her tone suggesting that this fact ought to give Baron Vasili much satisfaction.

Baron Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Widow Drubetskoy saw that Baron Vasili was afraid of finding in her a rival for Pierre’s fortune, and hastened to reassure him.

“If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,” said Widow Drubetskoy, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern, “I know Count Bezukhov’s character: noble, upright ... but you see Count Bezukhov has no one with him except Katerina and her sisters... They are still young...” She bent her head and continued in a whisper: “Has Count Bezukhov performed his final duty, Baron Vasili? How priceless are those last moments! It can make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if he is so ill. We women, Baron Vasili,” and she smiled tenderly, “always know how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it may be for me. I am used to suffering.”

Evidently, Baron Vasili understood her, and also understood, as he had done at Anna Pavlovna’s, that it would be difficult to get rid of Widow Drubetskoy.

“Would not such a meeting be too trying for Count Bezukhov, dear Widow Drubetskoy?” said Baron Vasili. “Let us wait until evening. The doctors are expecting a crisis.”

“But one cannot delay, Baron Vasili, at such a moment! Consider that the welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a Christian...”

A door of one of the inner rooms opened and Katerina entered with a cold, stern face. The length of her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Baron Vasili turned to her.

“Well, how is Count Bezukhov?”

“Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise...” said Katerina, looking at Widow Drubetskoy as at a stranger.

“Ah, my dear Katerina, I hardly knew you,” said Widow Drubetskoy with a happy smile, ambling lightly up to her. “I have come, and am at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have gone through,” and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.

Katerina gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room as Widow Drubetskoy took off her gloves and, occupying the position she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Baron Vasili to take a seat beside her.

“Boris,” she said to Boris with a smile, “I shall go in to see my uncle, Count Bezukhov, soon; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile, and don’t forget to give him the Rostovs’ invitation. They ask him to dinner. I suppose you won’t want Pierre to go?” she continued, turning to Baron Vasili.

“On the contrary,” replied Baron Vasili, who had plainly become depressed, “I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young man, Pierre... Here he is, and Count Bezukhov has not once asked for him.”

Baron Vasili shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight of stairs and up another, to Pierre’s rooms.

Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in St. Petersburg and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov’s was true. Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his father’s house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father, Count Bezukhov —the ladies were never favorably disposed toward him—would have used it to turn Count Bezukhov against him, he nevertheless on the day of his arrival went to his father’s part of the house. Entering the drawing-room, where Katerina and her sisters spent most of their time, he greeted the ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third read aloud. It was the eldest, Katerina, who was reading—the one who had met Widow Drubetskoy. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if he were a corpse or a leper. Katerina paused in her reading and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; her sister assumed precisely the same expression; while the youngest sister, the one with the mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she foresaw. She drew her wool thread down through the canvas and, scarcely able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the pattern.

“How do you do, Katerina?” said Pierre. “You don’t recognize me?”

“I recognize you only too well, too well.”

“How is Count Bezukhov? Can I see him?” asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual, but unabashed.

“Count Bezukhov is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently you have done your best to increase his mental suffering.”

“Can I see him?” Pierre again asked.

“Hmm... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see him... Olga, go and see whether Count Bezukhov ’s beef tea is ready—it is almost time,” Katerina added, giving Pierre to understand that they were busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he, Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.

Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed and said: “Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can see him.”

And Pierre left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of the sister with the mole.

 

The day before, Baron Vasili had arrived and settled in at Count Bezukhov’s house. Baron Vasili had then sent for Pierre and said to him: “Pierre, if you are going to behave here as you did in St. Petersburg, you will end very badly; that is all I have to say to you. Count Bezukhov is very, very ill, and you must not see him at all.”

Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole time in his rooms upstairs.

When Boris appeared at his door, Pierre was pacing up and down his room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and gesticulating.

“England is done for,” said Pierre, scowling and pointing his finger at someone unseen. “Pitt, as England’s prime minister, is a traitor to the nation and to the rights of man, and so he is sentenced to...” But before Pierre—who at that moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured London—could pronounce Pitt’s sentence, he saw a well-built and handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen and had quite forgotten him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way, he took Boris by the hand with a friendly smile.

“Do you remember me?” asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile. “I have come with my mother to see Count Bezukhov, but it seems he is not well.”

“Yes, it seems Count Bezukhov is ill. People are always disturbing him,” answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.

Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least embarrassment, Boris looked Pierre straight in the face.

“Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today,” said Boris, after a considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.

“Ah, Count Rostov!” exclaimed Pierre joyfully. “Then you are his son, Ilyá? Only fancy, I didn’t know you at first. Do you remember how we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It’s such an age...”

“You are mistaken,” said Boris deliberately, with a bold and slightly sarcastic smile. “I am Boris, son of Widow Drubetskoy. Count Rostov, the father, is Ilyá, and his son is Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot.”

Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.

“Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I’ve mixed everything up. One has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well, now we know where we are. And what do you think of the English’s Boulogne expedition? The British will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon gets across the English Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible. If only General Villeneuve doesn’t make a mess of things!”

Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve’s name.

“We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal than with politics,” said Boris in his quiet ironical tone. “I know nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy with gossip,” he continued. “Just now they are talking about you and your father, Count Bezukhov.”

Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for Boris’s sake that the latter might say something he would afterward regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly, looking straight into Pierre’s eyes.

“Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip,” Boris went on. “Everybody is wondering to whom Count Bezukhov will leave his fortune, though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will...”

“Yes, it is all very horrid,” interrupted Pierre, “very horrid.”

Pierre was still afraid that Boris might inadvertently say something disconcerting to himself.

“And it must seem to you,” said Boris flushing slightly, but not changing his tone or attitude, “it must seem to you that everyone is trying to get something out of the rich man?”

“So it does,” thought Pierre.

“But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that your father, Count Bezukhov, is rich, I don’t regard myself as a relation of his, and neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him.”

For a long time, Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick, clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a feeling of mingled shame and vexation.

“Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I know very well...”

But Boris again interrupted him.

“I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like that I did so? You must excuse me,” said Boris, putting Pierre at ease instead of being put at ease by him, “but I hope I have not offended you. I always make it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you come to dinner at the Rostovs’?”

And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it, became quite pleasant again.

“No, but I say,” said Pierre, calming down, “you are a wonderful fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course, you don’t know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the courage, but it’s splendid. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance. It’s queer,” Pierre added after a pause, “that you should have suspected me!” He began to laugh. “Well, what of it! I hope we’ll get better acquainted,” and he pressed Boris’ hand. “Do you know, I have not once been in to see Count Rostov. He has not sent for me... I am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?”

“And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?” asked Boris with a smile.

Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of the Boulogne expedition.

 

A footman came in to summon Boris—Widow Drubetskoy was going. Pierre, in order to make Boris’ better acquaintance, promised to come to dinner at the Rostov’s, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his spectacles into Boris’ eyes. After Boris had gone Pierre continued pacing up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.

As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a lonely life, Pierre felt an unaccountable tenderness for Boris and made up his mind that they would be friends.

Baron Vasili saw Widow Drubetskoy off. She held a handkerchief to her eyes and her face was tearful.

“It is dreadful, dreadful!” she was saying, “but cost me what it may, I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. Count Bezukhov must not be left like this. Every moment is precious. I can’t think why his nieces put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare him!... Goodbye, Baron Vasili! May God support you...”

“Goodbye, my beautiful friend,” answered Baron Vasili turning away from her.

 

“Oh, Count Bezukhov is in a dreadful state,” said Widow Drubetskoy to Boris when they were in the carriage. “He hardly recognizes anybody.”

“I don’t understand, Mamma—what is Count Bezukhov's attitude to Pierre?” asked Boris.

“Count Bezukhov's will is going to reveal that, my dear; our fate also depends on it.”

“But why do you expect that Count Bezukhov will leave us anything?”

“Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!”

“Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma...”

“Oh, heavens! How ill he is!” exclaimed Widow Drubetskoy.

After Widow Drubetskoy had driven off with Boris to visit Count Bezukhov, Countess Rostov sat for a long time all alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last, she rang.

“What is the matter with you, my dear?” Countess Rostov said crossly to the maid who kept her waiting some minutes. “Don’t you wish to serve me? Then I’ll find you another place.”

Countess Rostov was upset by Widow Drubetskoy’s sorrow and humiliating poverty and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always found expression in calling her maid “my dear” and speaking to her with exaggerated politeness.

“I am very sorry, ma’am,” answered the maid.

“Ask Count Rostov to come to me.”

Count Rostov came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as usual.

“Well, my dear? What a saute of game with Madiera sauce we are to have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for the chef were not ill-spent. He is worth it!”

He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling his gray hair.

“What are your commands, dear?”

“You see, my dear... What’s that mess?” Countess Rostov said, pointing to his waistcoat. “It’s the saute, most likely,” she added with a smile. “Well, you see, husband, I want some money.”

Countess Rostov’s face became sad.

“Oh, my dear!” ... and Count Rostov began bustling to get out his pocketbook.

“I want a great deal, husband! I want five hundred rubles,” and taking out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband’s waistcoat.

“Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?” Count Rostov called out in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will rush to obey the summons. “Send Dmítri to me!”

Dmítri, a man of a good family who had been brought up in Count Rostov’s house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.

“This is what I want, my dear fellow,” said Count Rostov to the deferential young man who had entered. “Bring me...” he reflected a moment, “yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don’t bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones for my wife.”

“Yes, Dmítri, clean ones, please,” said Countess Rostov, sighing deeply.

“When would you like them, Count Rostov?” asked Dmítri. “Allow me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,” he added, noticing that Count Rostov was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always a sign of approaching anger. “I was forgetting... Do you wish it brought at once?”

“Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to Countess Rostov.”

“What a treasure that Dmítri is,” added Count Rostov with a smile when the young man had departed. “There is never any ‘impossible’ with him. That’s a thing I hate! Everything is possible.”

“Ah, money, husband, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,” said Countess Rostov. “But I am in great need of this sum.”

“You, my dear, are a notorious spendthrift,” said Count Rostov, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went back to his study.

 

When Widow Drubetskoy returned from Count Bezukhov’s, the money, all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on Countess Rostov’s little table. Countess Rostov noticed that something was agitating her.

“Well, my dear?” asked Countess Rostov.

“Oh, what a terrible state Count Bezukhov is in! One would not know him, he is so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word...”

“For heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,” Countess Rostov began, with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified, elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.

Widow Drubetskoy instantly guessed Countess Rostov’s intention and stooped to be ready to embrace Countess Rostov at the appropriate moment.

“This is for Boris from me, for his outfit.”

Widow Drubetskoy was already embracing her and weeping. Countess Rostov wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over... But those tears were pleasant to them both.

Countess Rostov, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was already seated in the drawing room. Count Rostov took the gentlemen into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From time to time he went out to ask: “Hasn’t she come yet?” They were expecting Mary Dmitrievna, known in society as the terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Mary Dmitrievna was known to the Tzar’s family as well as to all Moscow and St. Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rude remarks, and told good stories about her, while nonetheless all without exception respected and feared her.

In Count Rostov’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of the war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew it had appeared. Count Rostov sat on the sofa between two guests who were smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.

One of the smokers was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor, Cousin Sinchin, a cousin of Countess Rostov’s, a man with “a sharp tongue” as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Berg, an officer in a regiment with whom Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had teased her elder sister Vera by speaking of Berg as her “intended.” Count Rostov sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of, was that of a listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one another.

“Well, then, old chap, my very honorable Berg,” said Cousin Sinchin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases—which was a peculiarity of his speech. “You expect to make an income out of the government,” you want to make something out of your company?”

“No, Cousin Sinchin; I only want to show that in the cavalry the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own position now...”

Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.

“Consider my position, Cousin Sinchin. Were I in the cavalry I should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and thirty,” said he, looking at Cousin Sinchin and Count Rostov with a joyful, pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must always be the chief desire of everyone else.

“Besides that, Cousin Sinchin, by exchanging into the Guards I shall be in a more prominent position,” continued Berg, “and vacancies occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a little aside and send something to my father,” he went on, emitting a smoke ring.

“So that squares matters... A German knows how to skin a flint, as the proverb says,” remarked Cousin Sinchin, moving his pipe to the other side of his mouth and winking at Count Rostov.

Count Rostov burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Cousin Sinchin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime the company commander might get killed, and he, as senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this and did not seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.

“Well, Berg, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go—foot or horse—that I’ll warrant,” said Cousin Sinchin, patting him on the shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.

Berg smiled joyously. Count Rostov, followed by his guests, went into the drawing room.

It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests, expecting the summons to hors d’oeuvres, avoid engaging in any long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. Count and Countess Rostov look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are waiting for—some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.

Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across, blocking the way for everyone. Countess Rostov tried to make him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. Pierre was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.

“You have only lately arrived?” Countess Rostov asked him.

“Yes, madam,” replied Pierre, looking around him.

“You have not yet seen my husband, Count Rostov?”

“No, madam.” He smiled quite inappropriately.

“You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s very interesting.”

“Very interesting.”

Countess Rostov exchanged glances with Widow Drubetskoy. The latter understood that she was being asked to entertain Pierre, and sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father, Count Bezukhov; but he answered her, as he had Countess Rostov, only in monosyllables. The other guests were all conversing with one another. “The Razumóvskis... It was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard on all sides. Countess Rostov rose and went into the ballroom.

“Mary Dmitrievna?” came her voice from there.

“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Mary Dmitrievna entered the room.

All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very oldest rose. Mary Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up. Mary Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.

“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her children,” Mary Dmitrievna said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to Count Rostov who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up,” and she pointed to the girls. “You must look for husbands for them whether you like it or not...”

“Well,” said Mary Dmitrievna, “how’s my Cossack?” (Mary Dmitrievna always called Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child’s arm as she came up fearless and gay to kiss her hand. “I know she’s a scamp of a girl, but I like her.”

Mary Dmitrievna took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with the pleasure of her saint’s-day fete, turned away at once and addressed herself to Pierre.

“Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit,” said Mary Dmitrievna, assuming a soft high tone of voice. “Come here, my friend Pierre...” and she ominously tucked up her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a childlike way through his spectacles.

“Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell your father, Count Bezukhov, the truth when he was in favor, and in your case, it’s my evident duty.” She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to follow, for this was clearly only a prelude.

“That Pierre…A fine lad!” Mary Dmitrievna said sarcastically. “My word! A fine lad!... Pierre’s father, Count Bezukhov, lies on his deathbed and Pierre amuses himself by setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame, sir, for shame! It would be better if Pierre went to the war.”

She turned away and gave her hand to Count Rostov, who could hardly keep from laughing.

“Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?” said Mary Dmitrievna.

Count Rostov went in first with Mary Dmitrievna, Countess Rostov followed on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Widow Drubetskoy with Cousin Sinchin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling Julie went in with Nicholas. After them other couples followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children, tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of Count Rostov’s household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of the table sat Countess Rostov with Mary Dmitrievna on her right and Widow Drubetskoy on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At the other end sat Count Rostov, with the hussar colonel on his left and Cousin Sinchin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the long table on one side sat the grown-up young people: Vera beside Berg, Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children, tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases, Count Rostov kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors’ glasses, not neglecting his own. Countess Rostov in turn, without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies’ end, an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men’s end the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much that Count Rostov held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a great deal. Of the two soups, he chose turtle with savory patties and went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in a napkin, from behind the next man’s shoulders and whispered: “Dry Madeira,” “Hungarian,” or “Rhine wine”, as the case might be. Of the four crystal glasses engraved with Count Rostov’s monogram that stood before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests. Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny lively little girl’s look made him inclined to laugh without knowing why.

Nicholas sat at some distance from the orphan niece Sonya, beside Julie, to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept looking around uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.

At the men’s end of the table, the talk grew more and more animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had already appeared in St. Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to General Kutuzov.

“And why the deuce are we going to fight Napoleon?” remarked Cousin Sinchin. “He has stopped Austria’s cackle and I fear it will be our turn next.”

The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Cousin Sinchin’s remark.

“It is for the reason, my goot sir,” said the colonel, speaking with a German accent, “for the reasson zat ze Tzar knows zat. He declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as vell as ze sanctity of its alliances...” he spoke this last word with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.

Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him, the colonel repeated the opening words of the manifesto:

... and the wish, which constitutes the Tzar’s sole and absolute aim—to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations—has now decided him to dispatch part of the army abroad and to create a new condition for the attainment of that purpose.

“Zat, my dear sir, is vy...” the colonel concluded, drinking a tumbler of wine with dignity and looking to Count Rostov for approval.

“Do you know the proverb: ‘Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but turn spindles at home!’?” said Cousin Sinchin, puckering his brows and smiling. “That suits us down to the ground. Suvórov, Russia’s most famous general who never lost a battle— Suvórov knew what he was about; yet they beat him hollow, and where are we to find Suvórovs now? I just ask you that,” said he, continually changing from French to Russian.

“Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!” said the colonel, thumping the table; “and ve must tie for our Tzar, and zen all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible” he dwelt particularly on the word possible... “as po-o-ossible,” he ended, again turning to Count Rostov. “Zat is how ve old hussars look at it, and zere’s an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a young hussar, how do you judge of it?” he added, addressing Nicholas (who when he heard that the war was being discussed had turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel).

“I am quite of your opinion,” replied Nicholas, flaming up, turning his plate around and moving his wine glasses about with as much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment facing some great danger. “I am convinced that we Russians must die or conquer,” he concluded, conscious—as were others—after the words were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for the occasion and were therefore awkward.

“What you said just now was splendid!” said his table partner Julie.

The orphan niece Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.

Pierre listened to the colonel’s speech and nodded approvingly.

“That’s fine,” said he.

“The young man’s a real hussar!” shouted the colonel, again thumping the table.

“What are you making such a noise about over there?” Mary Dmitrievna’s deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the table. “What are you thumping the table for?” she demanded of the hussar, “and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French are here?”

“I am speaking ze truce,” replied the colonel with a smile.

“It’s all about the war,” Count Rostov shouted down the table. “You know Nicholas is going, Mary Dmitrievna? My son Nicholas is going.”

“I have four sons in the army but still I don’t fret. It is all in God’s hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a battle,” replied Mary Dmitrievna’s deep voice, which easily carried the whole length of the table.

“That’s true!”

Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies’ at the one end and the men’s at the other.

“You won’t ask,” Natasha’s little brother was saying; “I know you won’t ask!”

“I will,” replied Natasha.

Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. Natasha half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to what was coming, and turning to her mother:

“Mamma!” rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice, audible the whole length of the table.

“What is it?” asked Countess Rostov, startled; but seeing by Natasha’s face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.

The conversation was hushed.

“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natasha’s voice sounded still more firm and resolute.

Countess Rostov tried to frown, but could not. Mary Dmitrievna shook her fat finger.

“Cossack!” she said threateningly.

Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at the elders.

“You had better take care!” said Countess Rostov.

“Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?” Natasha again cried boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken in good part.

Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.

“You see! I have asked,” whispered Natasha to her little brother and to Pierre, glancing at him again.

“Ice pudding, but you won’t get any,” said Mary Dmitrievna.

Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even Mary Dmitrievna.

“Mary Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don’t like ice cream.”

“Carrot ices.”

“No! What kind, Mary Dmitrievna? What kind?” Natasha almost screamed; “I want to know!”

Mary Dmitrievna and Countess Rostov burst out laughing, and all the guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Mary Dmitrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Mary Dmitrievna in this fashion.

Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served around. The band again struck up, Count Rostov and countess kissed, and the guests, leaving their seats, went up to congratulate Countess Rostov, and reached across the table to clink glasses with Count Rostov, with the children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to Count Rostov’s study.

The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for card games, and Count Rostov’s visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms, some in the sitting room, some in the library.

Count Rostov, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at everything. The young people, at Countess Rostov’ instigation, gathered around the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played first. After she had played a little air with variations on the harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.

“What shall we sing?” she said.

“‘The Brook,’” suggested Nicholas.

“Well, then, let’s be quick. Boris, come here,” said Natasha. “But where is Sonya?”

She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room ran to look for her.

Running into Sonya’s room and not finding her there, Natasha ran to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the Nicholas household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on Nurse’s dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook. Natasha’s face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint’s day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.

“Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Ooh... Ooh... Ooh...!” And Natasha’s large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort, Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.

“Nicholas is going away in a week’s time, his... papers... have come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry,” and Sonya showed a paper she held in her hand—with the verses Nicholas had written, “still, I should not cry, but you can’t... no one can understand... what a soul he has!”

And Sonya began to cry again because Nicholas had such a noble soul.

“It’s all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and Boris also,” Sonya went on, gaining a little strength; “he is nice... there are no difficulties in your way... But Nicholas is my cousin... one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it can’t be done. And besides, if Vera tells Mamma” (Sonya looked upon Countess Rostov as her mother and called her so) “that I am spoiling Nicholas’ career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God is my witness,” and Sonya made the sign of the cross, “I love her so much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice everything, only I have nothing...”

Sonya could not continue and she again hid her face in her hands and in the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that she understood all the gravity of her friend’s trouble.

“Sonya,” Natasha suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true reason for her friend’s sorrow, “I’m sure Vera has said something to you since dinner? Hasn’t she?”

“Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some others, and Vera found them on my table and said she’d show them to Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow Nicholas to marry me, but that he’ll marry Julie. You see how he’s been with her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?...”

And again Sonya began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began comforting her.

“Sonya, don’t believe her, darling! Don’t believe her! Do you remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don’t quite remember how, but don’t you remember that it could all be arranged and how nice it all was? After all, Cousin Sinchin’s brother has married his first cousin. And Boris and I are only second cousins, you know. Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all about it. He is so clever and so good!” said Natasha. “Don’t you cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!” and she kissed her and laughed. “Vera’s spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she won’t say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he doesn’t care at all for Julie.”

Natasha kissed her on the hair.

Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.

“Do you think so?... Really? Truly?” Sonya said, quickly smoothing her frock and hair.

“Really, truly!” answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that had strayed from under her friend’s plaits.

Both laughed.

“Well, let’s go and sing ‘The Brook.’”

“Come along!”

“Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!” said Natasha, stopping suddenly. “I feel so happy!”

And Natasha set off at a run along the passage.

Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with a flushed face and light, joyous steps. At the visitors’ request, the young people sang the quartette, “The Brook,” with which everyone was delighted. Then Nicholas sang another song which had just learned:

“At nighttime in the moon’s fair glow

 How sweet, as fancies wander free,

To feel that in this world there’s one

 Who still is thinking but of thee!

That while her fingers touch the harp

 Wafting sweet music o’er the lea,

It is for thee thus swells her heart,

 Sighing its message out to thee...

A day or two, then bliss unspoiled,

 But oh! till then I cannot live!...”

Nicholas had not finished the last verse before the young people began to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.

 

Pierre was sitting in the drawing room where Cousin Sinchin had engaged him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre. When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre said, laughing and blushing:

“Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers.”

“I am afraid of mixing the figures,” Pierre replied; “but if you will be my teacher...” And lowering his big arm he offered it to the slender little girl.

While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman (heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.

“Dear, dear! Just look at her!” exclaimed Countess Rostov as she crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.

Natasha blushed and laughed.

“Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be surprised at?”

 

In the midst of the third dance, there was a clatter of chairs being pushed back in the sitting room where Count Rostov and Mary Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks, entered the ballroom. First came Mary Dmitrievna and Count Rostov, both with merry countenances. Count Rostov, with playful ceremony somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Mary Dmitrievna. He drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and as soon as the last figure of the dance was ended, he clapped his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing the first violin:

“Hello there! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?”

This was Count Rostov’s favorite dance, which he had danced in his youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the anglaise.)

“Look at Papa!” shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her laughter.

And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure at the jovial old gentleman, Count Rostov, who standing beside his tall and stout partner, Mary Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot, and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more, prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs—the men on one side and the women on the other—who with beaming faces had come to see their master making merry.

“Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!” loudly remarked the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.

Count Rostov danced well and knew it. But his partner, Mary Dmitrievna, could not and did not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to Countess Rostov), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the dance. What was expressed by the whole of Count Rostov’s plump figure, in Mary Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose. But if Count Rostov, getting more and more into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on his light feet, Mary Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight exertions—the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms when turning, or stamp her foot—which everyone appreciated in view of her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment’s attention to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were watching Count Rostov and Mary Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone by sleeve or dress, urging them to “look at Papa!” though as it was they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the dance Count Rostov, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more lightly, and yet more lightly whirled Count Rostov, flying round Mary Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft foot backward, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.

“That’s how we used to dance in our time, my dear,” said Count Rostov.

“That was a Daniel Cooper!” exclaimed Mary Dmitrievna, tucking up her sleeves and puffing heavily.

While in the Rostovs’ ballroom the sixth dance was being danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man, preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house, there was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after Count Bezukhov’s health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to the celebrated grandee of the former Catherine the Great’s court, Count Bezukhov.

The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging their bows and trying to escape as quickly as possible from the glances fixed on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Baron Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days, escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times in low tones.

When the Military Governor had gone, Baron Vasili sat down all alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the other, leaning his elbow on his knee, and covering his face with his hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of Katerina.

Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying man’s room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.

“The limits of human life ... are fixed and may not be overpassed,” said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was listening naively to his words.

“I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?” asked the lady, adding the priest’s clerical title, as if she had no opinion of her own on the subject.

“Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament,” replied the priest, passing his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his bald head.

“Who was that? The Military Governor himself?” was being asked at the other side of the room. “How young-looking he is!”

“Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear Count Bezukhov no longer recognizes anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction.”

“I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times.”

Katerina’s sister had just come from the sick room with her eyes red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine the Great, leaning his elbow on a table.

“Beautiful,” said the doctor in answer to a remark about the weather. “The weather is beautiful, Katerina; and besides, in Moscow, one feels as if one were in the country.”

“Yes, indeed,” replied Katerina with a sigh. “So Count Bezukhov may have something to drink?”

Dr. Lorrain considered.

“Has he taken his medicine?”

“Yes.”

The doctor glanced at his watch.

“Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,” and Dr. Lorrain indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.

“Dere has neffer been a gase,” a German doctor was saying to an aide-de-camp, “dat one liffs after de sird stroke.”

“And what a well-preserved man Count Bezukhov was!” remarked the aide-de-camp. “And who will inherit his wealth?” he added in a whisper.

“It von’t go begging,” replied the German with a smile.

Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as Katerina’s sister went in with the drink she had prepared according to Dr. Lorrain’s instructions. The German doctor went up to Dr. Lorrain.

“Do you think he can last till morning?” asked the German, addressing Dr. Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.

Dr. Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger before his nose.

“Tonight, not later,” said he in a low voice, and he moved away with a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to understand and state the patient’s condition.

Meanwhile, Baron Vasili had opened the door to Katerina’s room.

In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture, whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to bark.

“Ah, is it you, Baron Vasili?”

Katerina rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and covered with varnish.

“Has anything happened?” she asked. “I am so terrified.”

“No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about business, Katerina,” muttered Baron Vasili, seating himself wearily on the chair she had just vacated. “You have made the place warm, I must say,” he remarked. “Well, sit down: let’s have a talk.”

“I thought perhaps something had happened,” she said with her unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the Baron, she prepared to listen.

“I wished to get a nap, my cousin, but I can’t.”

“Well, my dear?” said Baron Vasili, taking her hand and bending it downwards as was his habit.

It was plain that this “well?” referred to much that they both understood without naming.

Katerina, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for her legs, looked directly at Baron Vasili with no sign of emotion in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting before long. Baron Vasili understood it as an expression of weariness.

“And I?” he said; “do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn out as a post horse, but still, I must have a talk with you, Katerina, a very serious talk.”

Baron Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously, now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant expression that was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly and at the next glanced around in alarm.

Katerina, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony hands, looked attentively into Baron Vasili’s eyes evidently resolved not to be the first to break the silence, if she had to wait till morning.

“Well, you see, my dear cousin Katerina,” continued Baron Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not without an inner struggle; “at such a moment as this one must think of everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love you all, like children of my own, as you know.”

Katerina continued to look at him without moving, and with the same dull expression.

“And then of course my family has also to be considered,” Baron Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at her. “You know, Katerina, that we—you three sisters, Mámontov, and my wife—are Count Bezukhov’s only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me; but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything. Do you know that I have sent for Pierre? Count Bezukhov,” pointing to his portrait, “definitely demanded that he should be called.”

Baron Vasili looked questioningly at Katerina, but could not make out whether she was considering what he had just said or whether she was simply looking at him.

“There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, my cousin,” Katerina replied, “and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow his noble soul peacefully to leave this...”

“Yes, yes, of course,” interrupted Baron Vasili impatiently, rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little table that he had pushed away. “But... in short, the fact is... you know yourself that last winter Count Bezukhov made a will by which he left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre.”

“Count Bezukhov has made wills enough!” quietly remarked Katerina. “But he cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate.”

“But, my dear,” said Baron Vasili suddenly, clutching the little table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: “what if a letter has been written to the Tzar in which Count Bezukhov asks for Pierre’s legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of Count Bezukhov’s services, his request would be granted?...”

Katerina smiled as people do who think they know more about the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.

“I can tell you more,” continued Baron Vasili, seizing her hand, “that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Tzar knew of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not, then as soon as all is over,” and Baron Vasili sighed to intimate what he meant by the words all is over, “and Count Bezukhov’s papers are opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Tzar, and the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything as the legitimate son.”

“And our share?” asked Katerina smiling ironically, as if anything might happen, only not that.

“But, my poor Katerina, it is as clear as daylight! Pierre will then be the legal heir to everything and you won’t get anything. You must know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been overlooked, you ought to know where they are and must find them, because...”

“What next?” Katerina interrupted, smiling sardonically and not changing the expression of her eyes. “I am a woman, and you think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot inherit... a bastard!” she added as if supposing that this translation of the word would effectively prove to Baron Vasili the invalidity of his contention.

“Well, really, Katerina! Can’t you understand! You are so intelligent, how is it you don’t see that if Count Bezukhov has written a letter to the Tzar begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate, it follows that Pierre will become the new count, and Pierre will then inherit everything under the will? And if the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing but the consolation of having been dutiful. And all that follows is therefrom! That’s certain.”

“I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and you, my cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool,” said Katerina with the expression women assume when they suppose they are saying something witty and stinging.

“My dear Katerina,” began Baron Vasili impatiently, “I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Tzar and the will in Pierre’s favor are among Count Bezukhov’s papers, then, my dear girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don’t believe me, then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmítri Onúfrich” (the family solicitor) “and he says the same.”

At this a sudden change evidently took place in Katerina’s ideas; her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she herself evidently did not expect.

“That would be a fine thing!” said Katerina. “I never wanted anything and I don’t now.”

She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.

“And this is gratitude—this is recognition for those who have sacrificed everything for his sake!” Katerina cried. “It’s splendid! Fine! I don’t want anything, Baron Vasili.”

“Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters...” replied Baron Vasili.

But Katerina did not listen to him.

“Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and ingratitude—the blackest ingratitude—in this house...”

“Do you or do you not know where that will is?” insisted Baron Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.

“Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has been intriguing!”

Katerina wished to rise, but Baron Vasili held her by the hand. She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.

“There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Katerina, that it was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was afterward forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who...”

“Who sacrificed everything for him,” chimed in Katerina, who would again have risen had not Baron Vasili still held her fast, “though he never could appreciate it. No, my cousin,” she added with a sigh, “I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this world, one has to be cunning and cruel.”

“Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart.”

“No, I have a wicked heart.”

“I know your heart,” repeated Baron Vasili. “I value your friendship and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don’t upset yourself, and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or be it but an hour... Tell me all you know about the will, and above all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to Count Bezukhov. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it. You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help him and you.”

“Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing—I know!” cried Katerina.

“That’s not the point, my dear.”

“It’s that protégé of yours, that sweet Widow Drubetskoy, that woman whom I would not take for a housemaid... the infamous, vile woman!”

“Do not let us lose any time...”

“Ah, don’t talk to me! Last winter Widow Drubetskoy wheedled herself in here and told Count Bezukhov such vile, disgraceful things about us, especially about Sophie—I can’t repeat them—that it made Count Bezukhov quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was invalid.”

“We’ve got to it at last—why did you not tell me about it sooner?”

“It’s in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,” said Katerina, ignoring his question. “Now I know! Yes; if I have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!” almost shrieked Katerina, now quite changed. “And what does she come worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind. The time will come!”

While these conversations were going on in the reception room and Katerina’s room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent for) and Widow Drubetskoy (who found it necessary to accompany him) was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov’s house. As the wheels rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Widow Drubetskoy, having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre followed Widow Drubetskoy out of the carriage, and only then began to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him. He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house on both sides. But neither Widow Drubetskoy nor the footman nor the coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of them. “It seems to be all right,” Pierre concluded and followed Widow Drubetskoy. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow. Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to Count Bezukhov at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet judging by Widow Drubetskoy’s air of assurance and haste, Pierre concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the stairs, they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Widow Drubetskoy pass and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.

“Is this the way to Katerina’s apartments?” asked Widow Drubetskoy of one of them.

“Yes,” replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were now permissible; “the door to the left, ma’am.”

“Perhaps Count Bezukhov did not ask for me,” said Pierre when he reached the landing. “I’d better go to my own room.”

Widow Drubetskoy paused and waited for him to come up.

“Ah, my friend Pierre!” she said, touching his arm as she had done her son’s when speaking to him that afternoon, “believe me I suffer no less than you do, but be a man!”

“But really, hadn’t I better go away?” Pierre asked, looking kindly at her over his spectacles.

“Ah, my dear friend Pierre! Forget the wrongs that may have been done to you. Think that he is your father ... perhaps in the agony of death.” She sighed. “I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests.”

Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this had to be done grew stronger, and he meekly followed Widow Drubetskoy who was already opening a door.

This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of Katerina, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of these rooms. Widow Drubetskoy, addressing a maid who was hurrying past with a decanter on a tray as “my dear” and “my sweet,” asked about the health of Katerina and her sisters, and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The first door on the left led into Katerina and her sisters' apartments. The maid with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Widow Drubetskoy in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where Baron Vasili and Katerina were sitting close together talking. Seeing them pass, Baron Vasili drew back with obvious impatience, while Katerina jumped up and with a gesture of desperation slammed the door with all her might.

This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear depicted on Baron Vasili’s face so out of keeping with his dignity that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his guide. Widow Drubetskoy evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.

“Be a man, my friend Pierre. I will look after your interests,” said she in reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.

Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what “watching over his interests” meant, but he decided that all these things had to be. From the passage, they went into a large, dimly lit room adjoining Count Bezukhov’s reception room. It was one of those sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them. They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and a full-length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn Widow Drubetskoy as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.

Widow Drubetskoy’s face expressed a consciousness that the decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical St. Petersburg lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured. Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing Count Bezukhov’s confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble, not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another priest.

“God be thanked that you are in time,” said Widow Drubetskoy to one of the priests; “all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man, Pierre, is Count Bezukhov’s son,” she added more softly. “What a terrible moment!”

Having said this she went up to the doctor.

“Dear doctor,” said she, “this young man, Pierre, is Count Bezukhov’s son. Is there any hope?”

The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his shoulders. Widow Drubetskoy with just the same movement raised her shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful and tenderly sad voice, she said:

“Trust in His mercy!” and pointing out a small sofa for Pierre to sit and wait for her, Widow Drubetskoy went silently toward the door that everyone was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind it.

Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly, moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Widow Drubetskoy had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had never before received was shown to him. A strange lady, the one who had been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to make way for him. At first, Pierre wished to take another seat so as not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and to pass around the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and sat down in the lady’s chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and decided in his own mind that all was as it should be and that in order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the will of those who were guiding him.

Not two minutes had passed before Baron Vasili with head erect majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced around and noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain whether it was firmly fixed on.

“Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is well!” Baron Vasili turned to go.

But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: “How is...” and hesitated, not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man “Count Bezukhov,” yet ashamed to call him “father.”

“Count Bezukhov had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my friend...”

Pierre’s mind was in such a confused state that the word “stroke” suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Baron Vasili in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of illness. Baron Vasili said something to Dr. Lorrain in passing and went through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his whole body jerked at each step. Katerina followed him, and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about, and at last Widow Drubetskoy, still with the same expression, pale but resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly on the arm said:

“The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be administered. Come.”

Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all followed him in as if there were now no further need for permission to enter that room.

Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed, Pierre saw—covered to the waist by a bright green quilt—the familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb, and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind them stood Katerina’s sisters holding handkerchiefs to their eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Katerina, with a vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she glance round. Widow Drubetskoy, with a meek, sorrowful, and all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the strange lady. Baron Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose and was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each time he touched his forehead. Baron Vasili’s face wore a calm look of piety and resignation to the will of God. “If you do not understand these sentiments,” he seemed to be saying, “so much the worse for you!”

Behind Baron Vasili stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants; the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Widow Drubetskoy, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand that held the taper.

Katerina’s sister, Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest sister with the mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and remained with it hidden for a while; then looking up and seeing Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased, they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding Count Bezukhov’s hand got up and said something to the ladies. Widow Drubetskoy stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith, understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and even approved of it. He now approached Count Bezukhov with the noiseless step of one in the full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. Count Bezukhov was given something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval, Pierre noticed that Baron Vasili left the chair on which he had been leaning, and—with an air which intimated that he knew what he was about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse for them—did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined Katerina, and moved with her to the side of the room where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the bed both Baron Vasili and Katerina passed out by a back door but returned to their places one after the other before the service was concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once and for all that what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way essential.

The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received the sacrament. The dying Count Bezukhov lay as lifeless and immovable as before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and whispers, among which Widow Drubetskoy’s was the most distinct.

Pierre heard her say:

“Certainly Count Bezukhov must be moved onto the bed; here it will be impossible...”

The sick man, Count Bezukhov, was so surrounded by doctors, Katerina and her sisters, and servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face with its gray mane—which, though he saw other faces as well, he had not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded around the invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.

“Catch hold of my arm or you’ll drop him!” Pierre heard one of the servants say in a frightened whisper. “Catch hold from underneath. Here!” exclaimed different voices, and the heavy breathing of the bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried as if the weight they were carrying were too much for them.

As the bearers, among whom was Widow Drubetskoy, passed Pierre he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the dying man’s high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders, raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the same as Pierre remembered it three months before when Count Bezukhov had sent him to St. Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze fixed itself upon nothing.

After a few minutes of bustle beside the high bedstead, those who had carried the sick man dispersed. Widow Drubetskoy touched Pierre’s hand and said, “Come.” Pierre went with her to the bed on which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up Count Bezukhov was gazing straight at him but with a look the significance of which could not be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced inquiringly at his guide. Widow Drubetskoy made a hurried sign with her eyes, glancing at the sick man’s hand and moving her lips as if to send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of Count Bezukhov’s face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at Widow Drubetskoy to see what he was to do next. Widow Drubetskoy with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he was doing right. Widow Drubetskoy nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to look as small as possible. He looked at Count Bezukhov, who still gazed at the spot where Pierre’s face had been before he sat down. Widow Drubetskoy indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of Count Bezukhov’s face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct, hoarse sound. Widow Drubetskoy looked attentively at the sick man’s eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Count Bezukhov, then to some drink, then named Baron Vasili in an inquiring whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who stood constantly at the head of the bed.

“Wants to turn on the other side,” whispered the servant, and got up to turn Count Bezukhov’s heavy body toward the wall.

Pierre rose to help him.

While Count Bezukhov was being turned over, one of his arms fell back helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward. Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his dying brain, at any rate, he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre’s terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face, a feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At the sight of this smile, Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. Count Bezukhov was turned onto his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.

“Count Bezukhov is dozing,” said Widow Drubetskoy, observing that one of Katerina’s sisters was coming to take her turn at watching. “Let us go.”

Pierre went out.

There was now no one in the reception room except Baron Vasili and Katerina, who were sitting under the portrait of Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre and his companion, Widow Drubetskoy, they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw Katerina hide something as she whispered:

“I can’t bear the sight of Widow Drubetskoy.”

“Katerina has had tea served in the small drawing room,” said Baron Vasili to Widow Drubetskoy. “Go and take something, my poor Widow Drubetskoy, or you will not hold out.”

To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Widow Drubetskoy into the small drawing room.

“There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup of this delicious Russian tea,” Dr. Lorrain was saying with an air of restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese handle-less cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid in the small circular room. Around the table, all who were at Count Bezukhov’s house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors and little tables. During balls given at the house of Count Bezukhov, who did not know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several times. Now this same room was dimly lit by two candles. On one small table, tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the middle of the night, a motley throng of people sat there, not merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word and movement that none of them forgot what was happening and what was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the reception room where they had left Baron Vasili and Katerina. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a short interval followed her. Widow Drubetskoy was standing beside Katerina, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.

“Permit me, Widow Drubetskoy, to know what is necessary and what is not necessary,” said Katerina, evidently in the same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.

“But, my dear Katerina,” answered Widow Drubetskoy blandly but impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other from passing, “won’t this be too much for poor Count Bezukhov at a moment when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul is already prepared...”

Baron Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the two ladies were saying.

“Come, my dear Widow Drubetskoy, let Katerina do as she pleases. You know how fond Count Bezukhov is of her.”

“I don’t even know what is in this paper,” said Katerina, addressing Baron Vasili and pointing to an inlaid portfolio she held in her hand. “All I know is that his real will is in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...”

She tried to pass Widow Drubetskoy, but the latter sprang so as to bar her path.

“I know, my dear, kind Katerina,” said Widow Drubetskoy, seizing the portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily. “Dear Katerina, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! I beg you...”

Katerina did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if Katerina did speak, her words would not be flattering to Widow Drubetskoy. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost none of its honeyed firmness and softness.

“Pierre, my dear, come here. I think Pierre will not be out of place in a family consultation; is it not so, Baron Vasili?”

“Why don’t you speak, Pierre?” suddenly shrieked Katerina so loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled. “Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man’s room? Intriguer!” she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the portfolio.

But Widow Drubetskoy went forward a step or two to keep her hold on the portfolio and changed her grip.

Baron Vasili rose. “Oh!” said he with reproach and surprise, “this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you.”

Katerina let go.

“And you too!”

But Widow Drubetskoy did not obey him.

“Let go, I tell you! I will take responsibility. I myself will go and ask Count Bezukhov, I will!... does that satisfy you?”

“But, Baron Vasili,” said Widow Drubetskoy, “after such a solemn sacrament, allow him a moment’s peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your opinion,” said she, turning to Pierre who, having come quite close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of Katerina which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of Baron Vasili.

“Remember that you will answer for the consequences,” said Baron Vasili severely. “You don’t know what you are doing.”

“Vile woman!” shouted Katerina, darting unexpectedly at Widow Drubetskoy and snatching the portfolio from her.

Baron Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.

At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed out wringing her hands.

“What are you doing!” she cried vehemently. “He is dying and you leave me alone with him!”

Katerina dropped the portfolio. Widow Drubetskoy, stooping, quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom. Katerina and Baron Vasili, recovering themselves, followed her.

A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard face, again biting her underlip. At the sight of Pierre, her expression showed an irrepressible hatred.

“Yes, now you may be glad!” said she; “this is what you have been waiting for.” And bursting into tears she hid her face in her handkerchief and rushed from the room.

Baron Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as if in a fever.

“Ah, my friend!” said Baron Vasili, taking Pierre by the elbow, and there was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in it before. “How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all! Death is awful...” and he burst into tears.

Widow Drubetskoy came out last. She approached Pierre with slow, quiet steps.

“Pierre!” she said.

Pierre gave her an inquiring look. Widow Drubetskoy kissed Pierre on his forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause, she said:

“Count Bezukhov is no more...”

Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.

“Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as tears.”

Widow Drubetskoy led Pierre into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one could see his face. She left him, and when she returned he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.

 

In the morning Widow Drubetskoy said to Pierre:

“Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you. But God will support you: you are young and are now, I hope, in command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man.”

Pierre was silent.

“Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Count Bezukhov promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your father’s wish?”

Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in silence at Widow Drubetskoy.

 

After her talk with Pierre, Widow Drubetskoy returned to the Rostovs’s home and went to bed. On waking in the morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezukhov’s death. She said Count Bezukhov had died as she would herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying. As to the last meeting between Count Bezukhov and Pierre, it was so touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not know which had behaved better during those awful moments— Count Bezukhov who so remembered everything and everybody at last and had spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. “It is painful, but it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as Count Bezukhov and his worthy son,” said she. Of the behavior of Katerina and Baron Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers and as a great secret.

At Bald Hills, Baron Bolkonski’s estate, the arrival of his son, Andrei, and his wife, Lise, was daily expected, but this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life of the household. Baron Bolkonski was named General in Chief (nicknamed in society, “the King of Prussia”) ever since the late Tzar had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously with his daughter, Marya, and her companion, Lady-in-waiting Bourienne. Though in the new reign Baron Bolkonski was free to return to the capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He used to say that there are only two sources of human vice—idleness and superstition, and only two virtues—activity and intelligence. Baron Bolkonski himself undertook his daughter Marya’s education, and to develop these two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs, solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe, working in the garden, or superintending the building that was always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to the highest point of exactitude. He always came to the table under precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs, Baron Bolkonski was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the province in which Baron Bolkonski’s estate lay considered it his duty to visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber just as the architect, gardener, or Marya did, till Baron Bolkonski appeared punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather small old man, with a powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.

On the morning of the day that Andrei and Lise were to arrive, Marya entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and repeating a silent prayer. Every morning Marya came in like that, and every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.

An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose quietly and said in a whisper: “Please walk in.”

Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. Marya timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused at the entrance. Baron Bolkonski was working at the lathe and after glancing around continued his work.

The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around—all indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that Baron Bolkonski still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age. After a few more turns of the lathe, he removed his foot from the pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. Baron Bolkonski never gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively, said severely:

“Quite well? All right then, sit down.” Baron Bolkonski took the exercise book containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a chair with his foot.

“For tomorrow!” he said, quickly finding the page and making a scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.

Marya bent over the exercise book on the table.

“Wait a bit, here’s a letter for you,” said Baron Bolkonski suddenly, taking a letter addressed in a woman’s hand from a bag hanging above the table, onto which he threw it.

At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on Marya’s face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.

“From your friend Julie?” asked Baron Bolkonski with a cold smile that showed his still sound, yellowish teeth.

“Yes, it’s from Julie,” replied Marya with a timid glance and a timid smile.

“I’ll let two more letters pass, but the third I’ll read,” said Baron Bolkonski sternly; “I’m afraid you write much nonsense. I’ll read the third!”

“Read this if you like, Father,” said Marya, blushing still more and holding out the letter.

“The third, I said the third!” cried Baron Bolkonski abruptly, pushing the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.

“Well, madam,” Baron Bolkonski began, stooping over the book close to his daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat so that she felt surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. “Now, madam, these triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC...”

Marya looked in a scared way at her father’s eyes glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went, and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened that her fear would prevent her from understanding any of her father’s further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was the teacher’s fault or the pupil’s, this same thing happened every day: Marya’s eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear anything, but was only conscious of her stern father’s withered face close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem in peace. Baron Bolkonski was beside himself: moved the chair on which he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.

Marya gave a wrong answer.

“Well now, isn’t she a fool!” shouted Baron Bolkonski, pushing the book aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up and down, lightly touched his daughter’s hair, and sat down again.

Baron Bolkonski drew up his chair and continued to explain.

“This won’t do, Marya; it won’t do,” said he, when Marya, having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day’s lesson, was about to leave: “Mathematics are most important, madam! I don’t want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and you’ll like it,” and he patted her cheek. “It will drive all the nonsense out of your head.”

Marya turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an uncut book from the high desk.

“Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Julie has sent you. Religious! I don’t interfere with anyone’s belief... I have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go.”

Baron Bolkonski patted her on the shoulder and closed the door after her.

Marya went back to her room with the sad, scared expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers. Marya was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie who had been at the Rostovs’ name-day party.

Julie wrote in French:

Dear and precious Marya, How terrible and frightful a thing is a separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my happiness are wrapped up in you and that in spite of the distance separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart rebels against fate, and in spite of the pleasures and distractions around me, I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa? Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so well and seem to see before me as I write?

Having read thus far, Marya sighed and glanced into the mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful figure and a thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. “She flatters me,” thought Marya, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie did not flatter her friend, Marya’s eyes—large, deep, and luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts of warm light)—were so beautiful that very often in spite of the plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than that of beauty. But Marya never saw the beautiful expression of her own eyes—the look they had when she was not thinking of herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural expression as soon as she looked into a glass. She went on reading:

All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on their march to the frontier. Our dear Tzar has left St. Petersburg and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances of war. God grant that the Corsican monster, Napoleon, who is destroying the peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas, who with his enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Marya, that in spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds nowadays among our old men of twenty, and, particularly, he is so frank and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally the stronger! I know very well that Nicholas is too young ever to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic and pure intimacy, was what my heart needed. But enough of this! The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! Katerina and her sisters have received very little, Baron Vasili nothing, and it is Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been recognized as legitimate; so that he is now the new count and possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Baron Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he returned to St. Petersburg quite crestfallen.

I confess I understand very little about all these matters of wills and inheritance; but I do know that since Pierre, whom we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become count and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years, people have amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don’t even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as the future Countess. But you will understand that I have no desire for the post. In regards to marriages: do you know that a while ago that universal auntie Widow Drubetskoy told me, under the seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you? It is neither more nor less than with Baron Vasili’s son Anatole, whom they wish to reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguished, and it is on you that his relations’ choice has fallen. I don’t know what you will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it. He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is all I have been able to find out about him.

But enough gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper, and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apráksins’. Read the mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here. Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to grasp, it is an admirable book that calms and elevates the soul. Adieu! Give my respects to Baron Bolkonski and my compliments to Lady-in-waiting Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.

JULIE

P.S. Let me have news of your brother, Andrei, and his charming little wife, Lise.

Marya pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is the reply she wrote, also in French:

Dear and precious Julie, Your letter of the 13th has given me great delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual effect on you. You complain about our separation. What then should I say, if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me? Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for that young man? On such matters, I am only severe with myself. I understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me that Christian love, love of one’s neighbor, love of one’s enemy, is worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl like yourself.

The news of Count Bezukhov’s death reached us before your letter and Baron Bolkonski was much affected by it. He says Count Bezukhov was the last representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!

I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. Pierre always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part played by Baron Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear friend, our divine Savior’s words, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Baron Vasili but am still more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches—to what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among some good things it contains others that our weak human understanding cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which our divine Savior has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God, who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.

Baron Bolkonski has not spoken to me of a suitor but has only told me that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Baron Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you, dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may give me for husband.

I have had a letter from my brother, Andrei, who announces his speedy arrival at Bald Hills with his wife, Lise. This pleasure will be but a brief one, however, for he will leave us again to take part in this unhappy war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only where you are—at the heart of affairs and of the world—is the talk all of the war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature—which townsfolk consider characteristic of the country—rumors of war are heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I witnessed a heartrending scene... It was a convoy of conscripts enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Savior, Who preached love and forgiveness of injuries—and that men attribute the greatest merit to skill in killing one another.

Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Savior and His most Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!

MARYA

“Ah, you are sending off a letter, Marya? I have already dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother,” said the smiling Lady-in-waiting Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and with guttural r’s. She brought into Marya’s strenuous, mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless, lighthearted, and self-satisfied.

“Marya, I must warn you,” she added, lowering her voice and evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with exaggerated gravity, “Baron Bolkonski has been scolding his architect, Michael Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared.”

“Ah, dear friend,” replied Marya, “I have asked you never to warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge him and would not have others do so.”

Marya glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o’clock, as the day was mapped out, Baron Bolkonski rested and the Marya played the clavichord.

The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the snoring of Baron Bolkonski, who was in his large study. From the far side of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult passages—twenty times repeated—of a sonata by Dussek.

Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to the porch. Andrei got out of the carriage, helped his little wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. The butler, Butler Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the antechamber, reported in a whisper that the Baron was sleeping, and hastily closed the door. Butler Tikhon knew that neither Andrei’s arrival nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed order of the day. Andrei apparently knew this as well as Butler Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father’s habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.

“Baron Bolkonski will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Marya’s room,” he said.

Lise had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak just as merrily and prettily as ever.

“Why, this is a palace!” she said to Andrei, looking around with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball. “Let’s come, quick, quick!” And with a glance round, she smiled at Butler Tikhon, at Andrei, and at the footman who accompanied them.

“Is that Marya practicing? Let’s go quietly and take her by surprise.”

Andrei followed her with a courteous but sad expression.

“You’ve grown older, Butler Tikhon,” Andrei said in passing to the old man, who kissed his hand.

Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord came, the pretty, fair-haired Frenchwoman, Lady-in-waiting Bourienne, rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.

“Ah! What joy for Marya!” exclaimed Lady-in-waiting Bourienne: “At last! I must let her know.”

“No, no, please not... You are Lady-in-waiting Bourienne,” said Lise, kissing her. “I know you already through my sister-in-law’s friendship with you. She was not expecting us?”

They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Andrei stopped and made a grimace as if expecting something unpleasant.

Lise entered the room. The passage broke off in the middle, a cry was heard, then Marya’s heavy tread and the sound of kissing. When Andrei went in the two women, who had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each other’s arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they happened to touch. Lady-in-waiting Bourienne stood near them pressing her hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready to cry or to laugh. Andrei shrugged his shoulders and frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. Marya and Lise let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late, seized each other’s hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Andrei’s surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Lady-in-waiting Bourienne also began to cry. Andrei evidently felt ill at ease, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and apparently, it never entered their heads that it could have been otherwise at this meeting.

“Ah! My dear!... Ah! Marya!...” they suddenly exclaimed, and then laughed. “I dreamed last night...”—“You were not expecting us?...” “Ah! Marya, you have got thinner?...” “And you have grown stouter!...”

“I knew Lise at once,” put in Lady-in-waiting Bourienne.

“And I had no idea!...” exclaimed Marya. “Ah, Andrei, I did not see you.”

Andrei and Marya, hand in hand, kissed one another, and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Marya had turned toward Andrei, and through her tears, the loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful at that moment, rested on Andrei’s face.

Lise talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary and drawing up again the next moment when her face broke into a smile of glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they had had on the Spásski Hill which might have been serious for her in her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had left all her clothes in St. Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would have to dress in here; and that Andrei had quite changed, and that Kitty Odýntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor for Marya, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Marya was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law’s words. In the midst of a description of the last St. Petersburg fete she addressed her brother:

“So you are really going to the war, Andrei?” Marya said sighing.

Lise sighed too.

“Yes, and even tomorrow,” replied Andrei.

“Andrei is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had promotion...”

Marya did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of thought turned to Lise with a tender glance at her figure.

“Is it certain?” Marya said.

Lise’s face changed. She sighed and said: “Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful...”

Lise’s lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law’s and unexpectedly again began to cry.

“She needs rest,” said Andrei with a frown. “Don’t you, Lise? Take her to your room and I’ll go to Father. How is he? Just the same?”

“Yes, just the same. Though I don’t know what your opinion will be,” answered Lise joyfully.

“And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the lathe?” asked Andrei with a scarcely perceptible smile which showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he was aware of his weaknesses.

“The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and my geometry lessons,” said Marya gleefully, as if her lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.

When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for Baron Bolkonski to get up, Butler Tikhon came to call Andrei to his father. Baron Bolkonski made a departure from his usual routine in honor of his son’s arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments while he dressed for dinner. Baron Bolkonski always dressed in old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and when Andrei entered his father’s dressing room (not with the contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the animated face with which he talked to his son, Andrei), Baron Bolkonski was sitting on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle, entrusting his head to Butler Tikhon.

“Ah! Here’s the warrior Andrei! You want to vanquish Napoleon?” said Baron Bolkonski, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Butler Tikhon was holding fast to plait, would allow.

“You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like this he’ll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?” And Baron Bolkonski held out his cheek.

Baron Bolkonski was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He used to say that a nap “after dinner was silver—before dinner, golden.”) He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his thick, bushy eyebrows. Andrei went up and kissed his father on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father’s favorite topic—making fun of the military men of the day, and more particularly of Napoleon.

“Yes, Father, I have come to you and brought my wife who is pregnant,” said Andrei, following every movement of his father’s face with an eager and respectful look. “How is your health?”

“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course, I am well.”

“Thank God,” said Andrei smiling.

“God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on,” Baron Bolkonski continued, returning to his hobby; “tell me how the Germans have taught you to fight Napoleon by this new science you call ‘strategy.’”

Andrei smiled.

“Give me time to collect my wits, Father,” said he, with a smile that showed that his father’s foibles did not prevent his son from loving and honoring him. “Why, I have not yet had time to settle down!”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” cried Baron Bolkonski, shaking his pigtail to see whether it was firmly braided, and grasping his by the hand. “The house for your wife is ready. Marya will take her there and show her over, and they’ll talk nineteen to the dozen. That’s their woman’s way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About General Mikhelson’s army, I understand— Grand Marshal of the Court Tolstóy‘s too... a simultaneous expedition... But what’s the southern army to do? Prussia is neutral... I know that. What about Austria?” said he, rising from his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Butler Tikhon, who ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. “What of Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania, the area between Germany and Poland?”

Andrei, seeing that his father insisted, began—at first reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on—to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part of that army was to join some Swedish forces at the city of Stralsund, Pomerania; how two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, Italy, and how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the French from different sides. Baron Bolkonski did not evince the least interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to it continued to dress while walking about, and three times unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: “The white one, the white one!”

This meant that Butler Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he wanted. Another time Baron Bolkonski interrupted, saying:

“And will she soon be confined?” and shaking his head reproachfully said: “That’s bad! Go on, go on.”

The third interruption came when Andrei was finishing his description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old age: “Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he’ll return.”

Andrei only smiled.

“I don’t say it’s a plan I approve of,” said Andrei; “I am only telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now, not worse than this one.”

“Well, you’ve told me nothing new,” Baron Bolkonski repeated, meditatively and rapidly:

“God knows when he’ll return. Go to the dining room.”

At the appointed hour Baron Bolkonski, powdered and shaven, entered the dining room where his daughter-in-law, Marya, and Lady-in-waiting Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, Michael Ivanovich, who by a strange caprice of his employer’s was admitted to the table though the position of that insignificant individual was such as could certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. Baron Bolkonski, who generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely admitted even important government officials to his table, had unexpectedly selected the architect Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on Marya that Michael Ivanovich was “not a whit worse than you or I.” At dinner, the Baron usually spoke to the taciturn Michael Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.

In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen—one behind each chair—stood waiting for the Baron to enter. The head butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the door by which the Baron was to enter. Andrei was looking at a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of the family Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist belonging to the estate) of a ruling Baron, in a crown—an alleged descendant of Rúrik and ancestor of the Bolkonski’s. Andrei, looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original as to be amusing.

“How thoroughly like father that is!” Andrei said to Marya, who had come up to him.

Marya looked at him in surprise. She did not understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspire her with reverence and was beyond question.

“Everyone has his Achilles’ heel,” continued Andrei. “Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!”

Marya could not understand the boldness of her brother’s criticism and was about to reply when the expected footsteps were heard coming from the study. Baron Bolkonski walked in quickly and jauntily as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from the drawing room. The Baron stood still; his lively glittering eyes from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and rested on Lise. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tzar enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired in all around him. Baron Bolkonski stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly on the back of her neck.

“I’m glad, glad, to see you,” Baron Bolkonski said, looking attentively into her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. “Sit down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ivanovich!”

He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law, Lise. A footman moved the chair for her.

“Ho, ho!” said Baron Bolkonski, casting his eyes on her rounded figure. “You’ve been in a hurry. That’s bad!”

He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips only and not with his eyes.

“You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible,” he said.

Lise did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She was silent and seemed confused. Baron Bolkonski asked her about her father, and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away giving him greetings from various people and retelling the town gossip.

“Countess Apráksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has cried her eyes out,” Lise said, growing more and more lively.

As she became animated Baron Bolkonski looked at her more and more sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed the architect Michael Ivanovich.

“Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Napoleon will be having a bad time of it. Andrei” (he always spoke thus of his son) “has been telling me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I never thought much of him.”

Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when “you and I” had said such things about Napoleon, but understanding that he was wanted as a peg on which to hang the Baron’s favorite topic, he looked inquiringly at the young Baron, wondering what would follow.

“He is a great tactician!” said Baron Bolkonski to his Andrei, pointing to the architect Michael Ivanovich.

And the conversation again turned to the war, on Napoleon, and the generals and statesmen of the day. Baron Bolkonski seemed convinced not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know the A B C of war or of politics, and that Napoleon was an insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no longer any Potëmkins or Suvórovs left to oppose him; but he was also convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day were playing, pretending to do something real. Andrei gaily bore with his father’s ridicule of the new men, drew him on, and listened to him with evident pleasure.

“The past always seems good,” said Andrei, “but did not Suvórov himself fall into a carriage Moreau set him, and from which he did not know how to escape?”

“Who told you that? Who?” cried Baron Bolkonski. “Suvórov never lost a battle!” And he jerked away his plate, which Butler Tikhon briskly caught. “Suvórov!... Consider, Andrei. Two... Frederick and Suvórov; Moreau!... Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvórov had had a free hand, but he had the War Council on his hands. It would have puzzled the devil himself! When you get there you’ll find out what those on the War Council are like! Even the great Suvórov couldn’t manage them so what chance does General Kutuzov have? No, my dear boy,” he continued, “you and your generals won’t get on against Napoleon; you’ll have to call in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the Frenchman, Moreau,” he said, alluding to the invitation made that year to Moreau to enter the Russian service... “Wonderful!... Were the Potëmkins, Suvórovs, and Orlóvs Germans? No, Andrei, either you fellows have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you, but we’ll see what will happen. Napoleon has become a great commander among them! Hm!...”

“I don’t at all say that all the plans are good,” said Andrei, “I am only surprised at your opinion of Napoleon. You may laugh as much as you like, but all the same, Napoleon is a great general!”

“Michael Ivanovich!” cried Baron Bolkonski to the architect Michael Ivanovich who, busy with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: “Didn’t I tell you Napoleon was a great tactician? Here, Andrei says the same thing.”

“To be sure, your excellency,” replied the architect Michael Ivanovich.

Baron Bolkonski again laughed his frigid laugh.

“Napoleon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one—except one another. He made his reputation fighting them.”

And Baron Bolkonski began explaining all the blunders which, according to him, Napoleon had made in his campaigns and even in politics. Andrei made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion. He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European military and political events.

“You think I’m an old man and don’t understand the present state of affairs?” concluded Baron Bolkonski. “But it troubles me. I don’t sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours shown his skill?” he concluded.

“That would take too long to tell,” answered Andrei.

“Well, then go off to your Napoleon! Lady-in-waiting Bourienne, here’s another admirer of that powder-monkey Napoleon of yours,” he exclaimed in excellent French.

“You know that I am not a supporter of Napoleon!”

“Marlborough is going to war; God knows when he'll return.” hummed Baron Bolkonski out of tune and, with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.

Lise during the whole discussion and the rest of the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at Baron Bolkonski and now at Marya. When they left the table Lise took Marya’s arm and drew her into another room.

“What a clever man your father is,” said Lise; “perhaps that is why I am afraid of him.”

“Oh, he is so kind!” answered Marya.

Andrei was to leave the next evening. Baron Bolkonski, not altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. Lise was in her sister-in-law, Marya’s room. Andrei in a traveling coat without epaulets had been packing with his valet in the rooms assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols, and a saber—a present from his father who had brought it from the siege of Ochákov. All these traveling effects of Andrei’s were in very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with tapes.

When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Andrei’s face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind him, he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?—perhaps both, but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread of Marya that Andrei heard.

“I hear you have given orders to harness,” Marya cried, panting (she had apparently been running), “and I did so wish to have another talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrúsha,” she added as if to explain such a question.

She smiled as she uttered his pet name, “Andrúsha.” It was obviously strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be Andrúsha—the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in childhood.

“And where is Lise?” Andrei asked, answering her question only with a smile.

“She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room. Oh, Andrei! What a treasure of a wife you have,” said she, sitting down on the sofa, facing her brother. “Lise is quite a child: such a dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her.”

Andrei was silent, but Marya noticed the ironical and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.

“One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from them, Andrei? Don’t forget that she has grown up and been educated in society, so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter into everyone’s situation. To understand all is to forgive all. Think what it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to, to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her condition! It’s very hard.”

Andrei smiled as he looked at Marya, as we smile at those we think we thoroughly understand.

“You live in the country and don’t think that country life is terrible,” he replied.

“I... that’s different. Why speak of me? I don’t want any other life, and can’t, for I know no other. But think, Andrei: for a young society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her life, all alone—for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best society. There is only Lady-in-waiting Bourienne...”

“I don’t like your Lady-in-waiting Bourienne at all,” said Andrei.

“No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she’s much to be pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don’t need her, and she’s even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am even more so. I like being alone... Father likes her very much. She and the architect Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle and kind because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne says: ‘We don’t love people so much for the good they have done us, as for the good we have done them.’ Father took her when she was homeless after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads splendidly.”

“To be quite frank, Marya, I expect Father’s character sometimes makes things trying for you, doesn’t it?” Andrei asked suddenly.

Marya was first surprised and then aghast at this question.

“For me? For me?... Trying for me!...” said she.

“He always was rather harsh, and now I should think he’s getting very trying,” said Andrei, apparently speaking lightly of their father in order to puzzle or test his sister.

“You are good in every way, Andrei, but you have a kind of intellectual pride,” said Marya, following the train of her own thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation—“and that’s a great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as happy as I am.”

Andrei shook his head incredulously.

“The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth, Andrei... is Father’s way of treating religious subjects. I don’t understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what is as clear as day and can go so far astray. That is the only thing that makes me unhappy. But even in this, I can see lately a shade of improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was a monk he received and had a long talk with.”

“Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your powder,” said Andrei banteringly yet tenderly.

“Ah! My dear, I only pray and hope that God will hear me. Andrei...” she said timidly after a moment’s silence, “I have a great favor to ask of you.”

“What is it, dear?”

“No—promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise, Andrei!...” said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request was granted.

Marya looked timidly at her brother.

“Even if it were a great deal of trouble...” answered Andrei, as if guessing what it was about.

“Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father’s father, our grandfather, wore it in all his wars.” (She still did not take out what she was holding in her reticule.) “So you promise?”

“Of course. What is it?”

“Andrei, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will never take it off. Do you promise?”

“If it does not weigh a hundred pounds and won’t break my neck... To please you...” said Andrei. But immediately, noticing the pained expression his joke had brought to his sister’s face, he repented and added: “I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad.”

“Against your will, God will save and have mercy on you and bring you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace,” said Marya in a voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Savior in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.

Marya crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrei.

“Please, Andrei, for my sake!...”

Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Andrei would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. He understood, crossed himself, and kissed the icon. There was a look of tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.

“Thank you, my dear.” Marya kissed him on the forehead and sat down again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.

“As I was saying to you, Andrei, be kind and generous as you always used to be. Don’t judge Lise harshly,” she began. “She is so sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one.”

“I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Marya, or blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?”

Red patches appeared on Marya’s face and she was silent as if she felt guilty.

“I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to. And I am sorry for that,” Andrei went on.

The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: Lise had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it and had complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After crying she had fallen asleep. Andrei felt sorry for Marya.

“Know this, Marya: I can’t reproach, have not reproached, and never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach myself with anything in regard to her, and that always will be so in whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No! But why this is so I don’t know...”

As Andrei said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.

“Let us go to her, I must say goodbye. Or—go and wake and I’ll come in a moment. Petrúshka!” he called to his valet: “Come here, take these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right.”

Marya rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said: “Andrei, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have been answered.”

“Well, maybe!” said Andrei. “Go, Marya; I’ll come immediately.”

On the way to his sister’s room, in the passage which connected one wing with the other, Andrei met Lady-in-waiting Bourienne smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.

“Oh! I thought you were in your room,” Lady-in-waiting Bourienne said, for some reason blushing and dropping her eyes.

Andrei looked sternly at her and an expression of anger suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he reached his sister’s room his wife was already awake and her merry voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door. She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long self-restraint she wished to make up for the lost time.

“No, but imagine Countess Zúbova, with false curls and her mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old age... Ha, ha, ha! Marya!”

This very sentence about Countess Zúbova and this same laugh Andrei had already heard from Lise in the presence of others some five times. He entered the room softly. Lise, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating St. Petersburg reminiscences and even phrases. Andrei came up, stroked her hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered him and continued her chatter.

 

The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole. Servants with lanterns were bustling about on the porch. The immense house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to the young Baron. The members of the household were all gathered in the reception hall: the architect Michael Ivanovich, Lady-in-waiting Bourienne, Marya, and Lise. Andrei had been called to his father’s study as the latter wished to say good-by to him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.

When Andrei entered the study Baron Bolkonski in his old-age spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced around.

“Going?” And Baron Bolkonski went on writing.

“I’ve come to say goodbye.”

“Kiss me here,” and he touched his cheek: “Thanks, thanks!”

“What do you thank me for?”

“For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman’s apron strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!” And Baron Bolkonski went on writing so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. “If you have anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together,” he added.

“About Lise... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your hands...”

“Why talk nonsense? Say what you want.”

“When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for a doctor that specializes in birthing babies... Let him be here...”

Baron Bolkonski stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed his stern eyes on his son.

“I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work,” said Andrei, evidently confused. “I know that out of a million cases only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened.”

“Hm... Hm...” muttered Baron Bolkonski to himself, finishing what he was writing. “I’ll do it.”

He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to laugh.

“It’s a bad business, eh?”

“What is bad, Father?”

“The wife!” said Baron Bolkonski, briefly and significantly.

“I don’t understand!” said Andrei.

“No, it can’t be helped, lad,” said Baron Bolkonski. “They’re all like that; one can’t unmarry. Don’t be afraid; I won’t tell anyone, but you know it yourself.”

Baron Bolkonski seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it, looked straight into his son’s face with keen eyes which seemed to see through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.

Andrei sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him. Baron Bolkonski continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed rapidity.

“What’s to be done? She’s pretty! I will do everything. Make your mind easy,” said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.

Andrei did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his son.

“Listen!” said Baron Bolkonski; “don’t worry about your wife: what can be done shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to General Kutuzov. I have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all right—serve him. You need not serve under anyone if you are in disfavor. Now come here.”

Baron Bolkonski spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his son was accustomed to understanding him. He led him to the desk, raised the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled with his bold, tall, close handwriting.

“I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs; hand them to the Tzar after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of Suvórov’s wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you to read when I am gone. You will find them useful.”

Andrei did not tell Baron Bolkonski that he would no doubt live a long time yet. He felt that he must not say it.

“I will do it all, Father,” he said.

“Well, now, good-by!” Baron Bolkonski gave his son his hand to kiss and embraced him. “Remember this, Andrei, if they kill you it will hurt me, your old father...” he paused unexpectedly, and then in a querulous voice suddenly shrieked: “but if I hear that you have not behaved like a son of mine, I shall be ashamed!”

“You need not have said that to me, Father,” said Andrei with a smile.

Baron Bolkonski was silent.

“I also wanted to ask you,” continued Andrei, “if I’m killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you—as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you... Please.”

“Not let Lise have him?” said the old man, and laughed.

They stood silent, facing one another. Baron Bolkonski’s sharp eyes were fixed straight on his son’s. Something twitched in the lower part of the father’s face.

“We’ve said good-by. Go!” Baron Bolkonski suddenly shouted in a loud, angry voice, opening his door.

“What is it? What?” asked Marya and Lise when they saw for a moment at the door Andrei and the figure of Baron Bolkonski in a white dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.

Andrei sighed and made no reply.

“Well!” he said, turning to Lise.

And this “Well!” sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying: “Now go through your performance.”

“Andrei, already!” said Lise, turning pale and looking with dismay at her husband.

Andrei embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.

He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.

“Adieu, Marya,” said he gently to his sister, taking her by the hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.

Lise lay in the armchair, Lady-in-waiting Bourienne chafing her temples. Marya, supporting Lise, still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through which Andrei had gone and made the sign of the cross in his direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent sound of Baron Bolkonski angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Andrei gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.

“Gone? That’s all right!” said Baron Bolkonski; and looking angrily at the unconscious Lise, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed the door.