War and Peace (69 page)

“Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable that not even a continuance of the most brilliant successes would put them within reach, and doubts whether any means could gain them for
us. These are the actual words of the ministry in Vienna,” said the Danish
chargé d’affaires
.

“It is polite of them to doubt,” said the man of profound intellect with a subtle smile.

“We must distinguish between the ministry in Vienna and the Emperor of Austria,” said Mortemart. “The Emperor of Austria can never have thought of such a thing; it is only the ministers who say it.”

“Ah, my dear vicomte,” put in Anna Pavlovna; “Europe will never be our sincere ally.”

Then Anna Pavlovna turned the conversation upon the courage and firmness of the Prussian king, with the object of bringing Boris into action.

Boris listened attentively to the person who was speaking, and waited for his turn, but meanwhile he had leisure to look round several times at the fair Ellen, who several times met the handsome young adjutant’s eyes with a smile.

Very naturally, speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna asked Boris to describe his journey to Glogau, and the position in which he had found the Prussian army. Boris in his pure, correct French, told them very deliberately a great many interesting details about the armies, and the court, studiously abstaining from any expression of his own opinion in regard to the facts he was narrating. For some time Boris engrossed the whole attention of the company, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the novelty she was serving her guests was being accepted by them all with pleasure. Of all the party, the person who showed most interest in Boris’s description was Ellen. She asked him several questions about his expedition, and seemed to be extremely interested in the position of the Prussian army. As soon as he had finished, she turned to him with her habitual smile.

“You absolutely must come and see me,” she said in a tone that suggested that for certain considerations, of which he could have no knowledge, it was absolutely essential. “On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure.”

Boris promised to do so, and was about to enter into conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna drew him aside on the pretext that her aunt wished to hear his story.

“You know her husband, of course?” said Anna Pavlovna, dropping her eyelids, and with a melancholy gesture indicating Ellen. “Ah, such
an unhappy and exquisite woman! Don’t speak of him before her; pray, don’t speak of him. It’s too much for her!”

When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the rest, Prince Ippolit was in possession of the ear of the company. Bending forward in his low chair, he was saying:

“The King of Prussia!” and as he said it, he laughed. Every one turned towards him. “The King of Prussia,” Ippolit said interrogatively, and again he laughed and again settled himself placidly and seriously in the depths of his big, low chair. Anna Pavlovna paused a little for him, but as Ippolit seemed quite certainly not intending to say more, she began to speak of how the godless Bonaparte had at Potsdam carried off the sword of Frederick the Great.

“It is the sword of Frederick the Great, which I …” she was beginning, but Ippolit interrupted her with the words:

“The King of Prussia …” and again as soon as all turned to listen to him, he excused himself and said no more. Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Ippolit’s friend, addressed him with decision:

“Come, what are you after with your King of Prussia?”

Ippolit laughed as though he were ashamed of his own laughter.

“No, it’s nothing. I only meant …” (He had intended to repeat a joke that he had heard in Vienna and had been trying all the evening to get in.) “I only meant that we are wrong to make war for the King of Prussia.”
¹

Boris smiled circumspectly, a smile that might do duty either for a sneer or a tribute to the jest, according to the way it was received. Every one laughed.

“It is too bad, your joke, very witty but unjust,” said Anna Pavlovna, shaking her little wrinkled finger at him. “We are not making war for the sake of the King of Prussia, but for the sake of right principles. Ah,
le méchant, ce Prince Hippolyte!
” she said.

The conversation did not flag all the evening, and turned principally upon the political news. Towards the end of the evening it became particularly
eager, when the rewards bestowed by the Tsar were the subjects of discussion.

“Why, last year N. N. received the snuff-box with the portrait,” said the man of profound intellect. “Why shouldn’t S. S. receive the same reward?”

“I beg your pardon, a snuff-box with the Emperor’s portrait is a reward, but not a distinction,” said a diplomatist. “A present, rather.”

“There are precedents. I would instance Schwartzenberg.”

“It is impossible,” retorted another.

“A bet on it. The ribbon of the order is different.”

When every one got up to take leave, Ellen, who had said very little all the evening, turned to Boris again with a request, and a caressing, impressive command that he would come to her on Tuesday.

“It is of great importance to me,” she said with a smile, looking round at Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same mournful smile with which she accompanied any reference to her royal patroness, gave her support to Ellen’s wishes. It appeared that from some words Boris had uttered that evening about the Prussian army Ellen had suddenly discovered the absolute necessity of seeing him. She seemed to promise him that when he came on Tuesday she would disclose to him that necessity. When Boris entered Ellen’s magnificent reception-room on Tuesday evening he received no clear explanation of the urgent reasons for his visit. Other guests were present, the countess talked little to him, and only as he kissed her hand at taking leave, with a strangely unsmiling face, she whispered to him unexpectedly:

“Come to dinner to-morrow … in the evening … you must come … come.”

During that stay in Petersburg Boris was constantly at the house of the Countess Bezuhov on a footing of the closest intimacy.

War had broken out and the theatre of it was closer to the borders of Russia. On all sides could be heard curses upon the enemy of the human race, Bonaparte; in the villages there were levies of recruits and reserve men, and from the theatre of war came news of the most conflicting kind, false as usual, and hence variously interpreted.

The life of the old Prince Bolkonsky, of Prince Andrey, and of Princess Marya was greatly changed since the year 1805.

In 1806 the old prince had been appointed one of the eight commanders-in-chief, created at that time for the equipment of the militia throughout all Russia. In spite of his weakness and age, which had been particularly noticeable during the time when he believed his son to have been killed, the old prince did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been appointed by the Emperor himself, and this new field for his activity gave him fresh energy and strength. He was continually away on tours about the three provinces that were put under his command; he was punctilious to pedantry in the performance of his duties, severe to cruelty with his subordinates, and entered into the minutest details of the work himself. Princess Marya no longer took lessons in mathematics from her father, and only went into her father’s room on the mornings when he was at home, accompanied by the wet nurse and little Prince Nikolay (as his grandfather called him). The baby, Prince Nikolay, with his wet nurse and the old nurse Savishna, occupied the rooms that had been his mother’s, and Princess Marya spent most of her time in the nursery taking a mother’s place to her little nephew, to the best of her powers. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, appeared to be passionately fond of the child, and Princess Marya often sacrificed herself by giving up to her friend the pleasure of dandling and playing with the little
angel
(as she called the baby).

Near the altar of the church at Bleak Hills was a little chapel over the tomb of the little princess, and in the chapel had been placed a marble monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with its wings parted about to take flight for heaven. The angel had the upper lip lifted as though about to smile, and one day Prince Andrey and Princess Marya, as they came out of the chapel, confessed to one another that, strange to say, the face of the angel reminded them of the face of the little princess. But what was stranger, though this Prince Andrey did not confess to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had chanced to put into the angel’s face, Prince Andrey read the same words of reproach which he had read then on the face of his dead wife: “Ah, why have you done this to me?…”

Soon after Prince Andrey’s return, the old prince made over a part of the property to him, giving him Bogutcharovo, a large estate about thirty miles from Bleak Hills. Partly to escape the painful memories associated with Bleak Hills, partly because Prince Andrey did not always
feel equal to bearing with his father’s peculiarities, and partly from a craving for solitude, Prince Andrey made use of Bogutcharovo, established himself there and spent the greater part of his time there.

After the Austerlitz campaign, Prince Andrey had grimly resolved never to serve again in the army. And when war broke out and all were bound to serve, he took service under his father in the levying of the militia, so as to escape active service. Since the campaign of 1805 the old prince and his son had as it were exchanged parts. The old prince, stimulated by activity, expected the best results from the present campaign. Prince Andrey, on the contrary, taking no part in the war, and secretly regretting his inaction, saw in it nothing but what was bad.

On the 26th of February, 1807 the old prince set off on a tour of inspection. Prince Andrey was staying at Bleak Hills, as he usually did in his father’s absence. Little Nikolushka had been ill for the last three days. The coachman, who had driven the old prince away, returned bringing papers and letters from the town for Prince Andrey. The valet with the letters not finding the young prince in his study, went to Princess Marya’s apartments, but he was not there either. The valet was told that the prince had gone to the nursery. “If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has come with some papers,” said one of the nursery maids, addressing Prince Andrey, who was sitting on a child’s little chair. Screwing up his eyes, he was with trembling hands pouring drops from a medicine bottle into a glass half full of water.

“What is it?” he said angrily, and his hand shaking, he accidentally poured too many drops from the bottle into the glass. He tipped the medicine out of the glass on to the floor and asked for some more water. The maid gave it him.

In the room were a couple of armchairs, a child’s crib, a table and a child’s table and a little chair, on which Prince Andrey was sitting. The windows were curtained, and on the table a single candle was burning, screened by a note-book, so that the light did not fall on the crib.

“My dear,” said Princess Marya, turning to her brother from beside the crib where she was standing, “it would be better to wait a little … later.”

“Oh, please, do as I say, what nonsense you keep talking, you have kept putting things off, and see what’s come of it!” said Prince Andrey in an exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.

“My dear, it’s really better not to wake him, he has fallen asleep,” said the princess in a voice of entreaty.

Prince Andrey got up and went on tiptoe to the crib with the glass in his hand.

“Should we really not wake him?” he said, hesitating.

“As you think—really … I believe so … but as you think,” said Princess Marya, obviously intimidated and ashamed that her opinion should triumph. She drew her brother’s attention to the maid, who was summoning him in a whisper.

It was the second night that they had been without sleep looking after the baby, who was feverish. Mistrusting their own household doctor and expecting the doctor they had sent from the town, they had spent all that time trying first one remedy and then another. Agitated and worn out by sleeplessness, they vented their anxiety on each other, found fault with each other, and quarrelled.

“Petrusha with papers from your papa,” whispered the maid. Prince Andrey went out.

“Damn them all!” he commented angrily, and after listening to the verbal instructions sent him from his father, and taking the correspondence and his father’s letter, he went back to the nursery. “Well?” queried Prince Andrey.

“No change, wait a little, for God’s sake. Karl Ivanitch always says sleep is better than anything,” Princess Marya whispered with a sigh. Prince Andrey went up to the baby and felt him. He was burning hot. “Bother you and your Karl Ivanitch!” He took the glass with the drops of medicine in it and again went up to the crib.

“Andryusha, you shouldn’t!” said Princess Marya. But he scowled at her with an expression of anger and at the same time of anguish, and bent over the child with the glass.

“But I wish it,” he said. “Come, I beg you, give it him …”

Princess Marya shrugged her shoulders but obediently she took the glass, and calling the nurse, began giving the child the medicine. The baby screamed and wheezed. Prince Andrey, scowling and clutching at his head, went out of the room and sat down on the sofa in the adjoining one.

The letters were still in his hand. Mechanically he opened them and began to read. The old prince in his big, sprawling hand, making use of occasional abbreviations, wrote on blue paper as follows:

“I have this moment received, through a special messenger, very joyful news, if it’s not a falsehood. Bennigsen has gained it seems a complete victory over Bonaparte near Eylau. In Petersburg every one’s
jubilant and rewards have been sent to the army without stint. Though he’s a German—I congratulate him. Commander in Kortchevo, a certain Handrikov, I can’t make out what he’s about; full contingent of men and regulation provision not yet arrived. Gallop over at once and say I’ll have his head off if it’s not all here within the week. I have a letter too about the Prussian battle at Preussisch-Eylau from Petenka, he took part in it,—it’s true. If people don’t meddle who’ve no business to meddle, even a German beats Bonaparte. They say he’s running away in great disorder. Mind you gallop over to Kortchevo and do the business without delay!”