War and Peace (158 page)

“But the law, religion …” murmured the prince, on the point of yielding.

“Religion, laws … what can they have been invented for, if they are unable to manage that?” said Ellen.

The prince was astonished that so simple a reflection had never occurred to him, and applied to the council of the brotherhood of the Society of Jesus, with which he was in close relations.

A few days later, at one of the fascinating fêtes Ellen used to give at her summer villa at Kamenny Ostrov, a certain fascinating M. Jobert was presented to her; a man no longer young, with snow-white hair and brilliant black eyes,
un Jésuite à robe courte
, who walked for a long while with Ellen among the illuminations in the garden to the strains of music, conversing with her of the love of God, of Christ, of the heart of the Holy Mother, and of the consolations afforded in this life and the next by the one true Catholic faith. Ellen was touched, and several times tears stood both in her eyes and in M. Jobert’s, and their voices trembled. A dance, to which her partner fetched Ellen away, cut short her conversation with the future “director of her conscience,” but the next evening M. Jobert came alone to see Ellen, and from that day he was a frequent visitor.

One day he took the countess into a Catholic church, where she fell on her knees before the altar, up to which she was conducted. The fascinating, middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head, and as she herself afterwards described it, she felt something like a breath of fresh air, which seemed wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was the “grace of God.”

Then an abbé
à robe longue
was brought to her; he confessed her, and absolved her from her sins. Next day a box was brought containing the Sacred Host, and left for her to partake of at her house. Several days later Ellen learned to her satisfaction that she had now been admitted into the true Catholic Church, and that in a few days the Pope himself would hear of her case, and send her a document of some sort.

All that was done with her and around her at this period, the attention paid her by so many clever men, and expressed in such agreeable and subtle forms, and her dovelike purity during her conversion (she wore nothing but white dresses and white ribbons all the time)—all afforded her gratification. But this gratification never led her for one instant to
lose sight of her object. And, as always happens in contests of cunning, the stupid person gains more than the cleverer; Ellen, fully grasping that the motive of all these words and all this manœuvring was by her conversion to Catholicism to get a round sum from her for the benefit of the Jesuit order (this was hinted at, indeed), held back the money, while insisting steadily on the various operations that would set her free from her conjugal bonds. To her notions, the real object of every religion was to provide recognised forms of propriety for the satisfaction of human desires. And with this end in view, she insisted, in one of her conversations with her spiritual adviser, on demanding an answer to the question how far her marriage was binding.

They were sitting in the drawing-room window. It was dusk. There was a scent of flowers from the window. Ellen wore a white dress, transparent over the bosom and shoulders. The sleek, well-fed abbé, with his plump, clean-shaven chin, his amiable, strong mouth, and his white hands, clasped mildly on his knees, was sitting close by Ellen. With a subtle smile on his lips, and a look of discreet admiration in his eyes, he gazed from time to time at her face, as he expounded his views on the subject. Ellen, with a restless smile, stared at his curly hair and his smooth-shaven, blackish cheeks, and seemed every minute to be expecting the conversation to take a new turn. But the abbé, though unmistakably aware of the beauty of his companion, was also interested in his own skilful handling of the question. The spiritual adviser adopted the following chain of reasoning:—

“In ignorance,” said he, “of the significance of your promise, you took a vow of conjugal fidelity to a man who, on his side, was guilty of sacrilege in entering on the sacrament of matrimony with no faith in its religious significance. That marriage had not the dual binding force it should have had. But in spite of that, your vow was binding upon you. You broke it. What did you commit? Venial sin or mortal sin? A venial sin, because you committed it with no intention of acting wrongly. If now, with the object of bearing children, you should enter into a new marriage, your sin might be forgiven. But the question again falls into two divisions. First …”

“But, I imagine,” Ellen, who was getting bored, said suddenly, with her fascinating smile, “that after being converted to the true religion, cannot be bound by any obligations laid upon me by a false religion.”

Her spiritual adviser was astounded at the simplicity of this solution, as simple as the solution of Columbus’s egg. He was enchanted at the
unexpected rapidity of his pupil’s progress, but could not abandon the edifice of subtle argument that had cost him mental effort.

“Let us understand each other,” he said, with a smile; and began to find arguments to refute his spiritual daughter’s contention.

Ellen perceived that the matter was very simple and easy from the ecclesiastical point of view, but that her spiritual counsellors raised difficulties simply because they were apprehensive of the way in which it might be looked at by the temporal authorities.

And, consequently, Ellen decided in her own mind that the way must be paved for society to look at the matter in the true light. She excited the jealousy of the old dignitary, and said the same thing to him as she had to her other suitor—that is, gave him to understand that the sole means of obtaining exclusive rights over her was to marry her. The elderly dignitary was, like the young foreign prince, for the first moment taken aback at this proposal of marriage from a wife whose husband was living. But Ellen’s unfaltering confidence in asserting that it was a matter as simple and natural as the marriage of an unmarried girl had its effect on him too. Had the slightest traces of hesitation, shame, or reserve been perceptible in Ellen herself, her case would have been undoubtedly lost. But far from it; with perfect directness and simple-hearted naïveté, she told her intimate friends (and that term included all Petersburg), that both the prince and the dignitary had made her proposals of marriage, and that she loved both, and was afraid of grieving either.

The rumour was immediately all over Petersburg—not that Ellen wanted a divorce from her husband (had such a rumour been discussed very many persons would have set themselves against any such illegal proceeding)—but that the unhappy, interesting Ellen was in hesitation which of her two suitors to marry. The question was no longer how far any marriage was possible, but simply which would be the more suitable match for her, and how the court would look at the question. There were, indeed, certain strait-laced people who could not rise to the high level of the subject, and saw in the project a desecration of the sanctity of marriage; but such persons were few in number, and they held their tongues; while the majority were interested in the question of Ellen’s
happiness, and which would be the better match for her. As to whether it were right or wrong for a wife to marry when her husband was alive, that was not discussed, as the question was evidently not a subject of doubt for persons “wiser than you and me” (as was said), and to doubt the correctness of their decision would be risking the betrayal of one’s ignorance and absence of
savoir faire
.

Marya Dmitryevna Ahrosimov, who had come that summer to Petersburg to see one of her sons, was the only person who ventured on the direct expression of a contrary opinion. Meeting Ellen at a ball, Marya Dmitryevna stopped her in the middle of the room, and in the midst of a general silence said to her, in her harsh voice:

“So you are going to pass on from one husband to another, I hear! You think, I dare say, it’s a new fashion you are setting. But you are not the first, madam. That’s a very old idea. They do the same in all the …” And with these words, Marya Dmitryevna tucked up her broad sleeves with her usual menacing action, and looking severely round her, walked across the ballroom.

Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitryevna, yet in Petersburg they looked on her as a sort of buffoon, and therefore of all her words they noticed only the last coarse one, and repeated it to one another in whispers, supposing that the whole point of her utterance lay in that.

Prince Vassily had of late dropped into very frequently forgetting what he had said, and repeating the same phrase a hundred times; and every time he happened to see his daughter he used to say:

“Ellen, I have a word to say to you,” he would say, drawing her aside and pulling her arm downwards. “I have got wind of certain projects relative to … you know. Well, my dear child, you know how my father’s heart rejoices to know you are … You have suffered so much. But, my dear child, consult only your heart. That’s all I tell you.” And concealing an emotion identical on each occasion, he pressed his cheek to his daughter’s cheek and left her.

Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation as a wit, was a disinterested friend of Ellen’s; one of those friends always to be seen in the train of brilliant women, men friends who can never pass into the rank of lovers. One day, in a “small and intimate circle,” Bilibin gave his friend Ellen his views on the subject.

“Écoutez
, Bilibin” (Ellen always called friends of the category to which Bilibin belonged by their surnames), and she touched his coat-sleeve
with her white, beringed fingers. “Tell me, as you would a sister, what ought I to do? Which of the two?”

Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows, and pondered with a smile on his lips.

“You do not take me unawares, you know,” he said. “As a true friend, I have thought, and thought again of your affair. You see, if you marry the prince”—(the younger suitor) he crooked his finger—“you lose forever the chance of marrying the other, and then you displease the court. (There is a sort of relationship, you know.) But if you marry the old count, you make the happiness of his last days. And then as widow of the great … the prince will not be making a
mésalliance
in marrying you …” and Bilibin let the wrinkles run out of his face.

“That’s a real friend!” said Ellen beaming, and once more touching Bilibin’s sleeve. “But the fact is I love them both, and I don’t want to make them unhappy. I would give my life for the happiness of both,” she declared.

Bilibin shrugged his shoulders to denote that for such a trouble even he could suggest no remedy.

“Une maïtresse-femme!
That is what’s called putting the question squarely. She would like to be married to all three at once,” thought Bilibin.

“But do tell me what is your husband’s view of the question?” he said, the security of his reputation saving him from all fear of discrediting himself by so naïve a question. “Does he consent?”

“Oh, he is so fond of me!” said Ellen, who, for some unknown reason, fancied that Pierre too adored her.
“Il fera tout pour moi.”

Bilibin puckered up his face in preparation of the coming
mot
.

“Même le divorce?”
he said.

Ellen laughed.

Among the persons who ventured to question the legality of the proposed marriage was Ellen’s mother, Princess Kuragin. She had constantly suffered pangs of envy of her daughter, and now when the ground for such envy was the one nearest to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to the idea of it.

She consulted a Russian priest to ascertain how far divorce and remarriage was possible for a woman in her husband’s lifetime. The priest assured her that this was impossible; and to her delight referred her to the text in the Gospel in which (as it seemed to the priest) remarriage during the lifetime of the husband was directly forbidden.

Armed with these arguments, which seemed to her irrefutable, Princess Kuragin drove round to her daughter’s early one morning in order to find her alone.

Ellen heard her mother’s protests to the end, and smiled with bland sarcasm.

“You see it is plainly said: ‘He who marryeth her that is divorced …’ ”

“O mamma, don’t talk nonsense. You don’t understand. In my position I have duties …” Ellen began, passing out of Russian into French, for in the former language she always felt a lack of clearness about her case.

“But, my dear …”

“O mamma, how is it you don’t understand that the Holy Father, who has the right of granting dispensations …”

At that moment the lady companion, who lived in Ellen’s house, came in to announce that his highness was in the drawing-room, and wished to see her.

“No, tell him I don’t want to see him, that I am furious with him for not keeping his word.”

“Countess, there is mercy for every sin,” said a young man with fair hair and a long face and long nose.

The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied at his entrance. The young man took no notice of her. Princess Kuragin nodded to her daughter, and swam to the door.

“Yes, she is right,” thought the old princess, all of whose convictions had been dissipated by the appearance of his highness on the scene. “She is right; but how was it in our youth—gone now for ever—we knew nothing of this? And it is so simple,” thought Princess Kuragin, as she settled herself in her carriage.

At the beginning of August Ellen’s affairs were settled, and she wrote to her husband (who, as she supposed, was deeply attached to her) a letter, in which she made known to him her intention of marrying N. N. She informed him also of her conversion to the one true faith, and begged him to go through all the necessary formalities for obtaining a divorce, of which the bearer of the letter would give him further details. “On which I pray God to have you in His holy and powerful keeping. Your friend, Ellen.”

This letter was brought to Pierre’s house at the time when he was on the field of Borodino.

At the end of the day of Borodino, Pierre ran for a second time from Raevsky’s battery, and with crowds of soldiers crossed the ravine on the way to Knyazkovo. There he reached an ambulance tent, and seeing blood and hearing screams and groans, he hurried on, caught up in a mob of soldiers.