War and Peace (5 page)

Prince Andrey looked with a smile first at Pierre, then at the vicomte, then at their hostess.

For the first minute Anna Pavlovna had, in spite of her social adroitness, been dismayed by Pierre’s outbreak; but when she saw that the vicomte was not greatly discomposed by Pierre’s sacrilegious utterances, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to suppress them, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in attacking the orator.

“
Mais, mon cher Monsieur Pierre
,” said Anna Pavlovna, “what have you to say for a great man who was capable of executing the duc—or simply any human being—guiltless and untried?”

“I should like to ask,” said the vicomte, “how
monsieur
would explain the 18th of Brumaire? Was not that treachery?”

“It was a juggling trick not at all like a great man’s way of acting.”

“And the wounded he killed in Africa?” said the little princess; “that was awful!” And she shrugged her shoulders.

“He’s a plebeian, whatever you may say,” said Prince Ippolit.

Monsieur Pierre did not know which to answer. He looked at them all and smiled. His smile was utterly unlike the half-smile of all the others. When he smiled, suddenly, instantaneously, his serious, even rather sullen, face vanished completely, and a quite different face appeared, childish, good-humoured, even rather stupid, that seemed to beg indulgence. The vicomte, who was seeing him for the first time, saw clearly that this Jacobin was by no means so formidable as his words. Every one was silent.

“How is he to answer every one at once?” said Prince Andrey. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman, one must distinguish between his acts as a private person and as a general or an emperor. So it seems to me.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” put in Pierre, delighted at the assistance that had come to support him.

“One must admit,” pursued Prince Andrey, “that Napoleon as a man was great at the bridge of Arcola, or in the hospital at Jaffa, when he gave his hand to the plague-stricken, but … but there are other actions it would be hard to justify.”

Prince Andrey, who obviously wished to relieve the awkwardness of Pierre’s position, got up to go, and made a sign to his wife.

Suddenly Prince Ippolit got up, and with a wave of his hands stopped every one, and motioning to them to be seated, began:

“Ah, I heard a Moscow story to-day; I must entertain you with it. You will excuse me, vicomte, I must tell it in Russian. If not, the point of the story will be lost.” And Prince Ippolit began speaking in Russian, using the sort of jargon Frenchmen speak after spending a year in Russia. Every one waited expectant; Prince Ippolit had so eagerly, so insistently called for the attention of all for his story.

“In Moscow there is a lady,
une dame
. And she is very stingy. She wanted to have two footmen behind her carriage. And very tall footmen. That was her taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also very tall. She said.…”

Here Prince Ippolit paused and pondered, apparently collecting his ideas with difficulty.

“She said … yes, she said: ‘Girl,’ to the lady’s maid, ‘put on
livrée
, and get up behind the carriage, to pay calls.’ ”

Here Prince Ippolit gave a loud guffaw, laughing long before any of his audience, which created an impression by no means flattering to him. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, did smile, however.

“She drove off. Suddenly there was a violent gust of wind. The girl lost her hat, and her long hair fell down …”

At this point he could not restrain himself, and began laughing violently, articulating in the middle of a loud guffaw, “And all the world knew …”

There the anecdote ended. Though no one could understand why he had told it, and why he had insisted on telling it in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna and several other people appreciated the social breeding of Prince Ippolit in so agreeably putting a close to the disagreeable and ill-bred outbreak of Monsieur Pierre. The conversation after this episode broke up into small talk of no interest concerning the last and the approaching ball, the theatre, and where and when one would meet so-and-so again.

Thanking Anna Pavlovna for her
charmante soirée
, the guests began to take leave.

Pierre was clumsy, stout and uncommonly tall, with huge red hands;
he did not, as they say, know how to come into a drawing-room and still less how to get out of one, that is, how to say something particularly agreeable on going away. Moreover, he was dreamy. He stood up, and picking up a three-cornered hat with the plume of a general in it instead of his own, he kept hold of it, pulling the feathers till the general asked him to restore it. But all his dreaminess and his inability to enter a drawing-room or talk properly in it were atoned for by his expression of good-nature, simplicity and modesty. Anna Pavlovna turned to him, and with Christian meekness signifying her forgiveness for his misbehaviour, she nodded to him and said:

“I hope I shall see you again, but I hope too you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”

He made no answer, simply bowed and displayed to every one once more his smile, which said as plainly as words: “Opinions or no opinions, you see what a nice, good-hearted fellow I am.” And Anna Pavlovna and every one else instinctively felt this. Prince Andrey had gone out into the hall and turning his shoulders to the footman who was ready to put his cloak on him, he listened indifferently to his wife’s chatter with Prince Ippolit, who had also come out into the hall. Prince Ippolit stood close to the pretty princess, so soon to be a mother, and stared persistently straight at her through his eyeglass.

“Go in, Annette, you’ll catch cold,” said the little princess, saying good-bye to Anna Pavlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low voice.

Anna Pavlovna had managed to have a few words with Liza about the match she was planning between Anatole and the sister-in-law of the little princess.

“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pavlovna, also in an undertone; “you write to her and tell me how the father will view the matter.
Au revoir
!” And she went back out of the hall.

Prince Ippolit went up to the little princess and, bending his face down close to her, began saying something to her in a half whisper.

Two footmen, one the princess’s, the other his own, stood with shawl and redingote waiting till they should finish talking, and listened to their French prattle, incomprehensible to them, with faces that seemed to say that they understood what was being said but would not show it. The princess, as always, talked with a smile and listened laughing.

“I’m very glad I didn’t go to the ambassador’s,” Prince Ippolit was saying: “such a bore.… A delightful evening it has been, hasn’t it? delightful.”

“They say the ball will be a very fine one,” answered the little princess, twitching up her downy little lip. “All the pretty women are to be there.”

“Not all, since you won’t be there; not all,” said Prince Ippolit, laughing gleefully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, shoving him aside as he did so, he began putting it on the little princess. Either from awkwardness or intentionally—no one could have said which—he did not remove his arms for a long while after the shawl had been put on, as it were holding the young woman in his embrace.

Gracefully, but still smiling, she moved away, turned round and glanced at her husband. Prince Andrey’s eyes were closed: he seemed weary and drowsy.

“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, avoiding her eyes.

Prince Ippolit hurriedly put on his redingote, which in the latest mode hung down to his heels, and stumbling over it, ran out on to the steps after the princess, whom the footman was assisting into the carriage.

“
Princesse, au revoir
,” he shouted, his tongue tripping like his legs.

The princess, picking up her gown, seated herself in the darkness of the carriage; her husband was arranging his sabre; Prince Ippolit, under the pretence of assisting, was in every one’s way.

“Allow me, sir,” Prince Andrey said in Russian drily and disagreeably to Prince Ippolit, who prevented his passing.

“I expect you, Pierre,” the same voice called in warm and friendly tones.

The postillion started at a trot, and the carriage rumbled away. Prince Ippolit gave vent to a short, jerky guffaw, as he stood on the steps waiting for the vicomte, whom he had promised to take home.

“Well, my dear fellow, your little princess is very good-looking, very good-looking,” said the vicomte, as he sat in the carriage with Ippolit. “Very good-looking indeed;” he kissed his finger tips. “And quite French.”

Ippolit snorted and laughed.

“And, do you know, you are a terrible fellow with that little innocent way of yours,” pursued the vicomte. “I am sorry for the poor husband, that officer boy who gives himself the airs of a reigning prince.”

Ippolit guffawed again, and in the middle of a laugh articulated:

“And you said that the Russian ladies were not equal to the French ladies. You must know how to take them.”

Pierre, arriving first, went to Prince Andrey’s study, like one of the household, and at once lay down on the sofa, as his habit was, and taking up the first book he came upon in the shelf (it was Cæsar’s
Commentaries
) he propped himself on his elbow, and began reading it in the middle.

“What a shock you gave Mlle. Scherer! She’ll be quite ill now,” Prince Andrey said, as he came into the study rubbing his small white hands.

Pierre rolled his whole person over so that the sofa creaked, turned his eager face to Prince Andrey, smiled and waved his hand to him.

“Oh, that abbé was very interesting, only he’s got a wrong notion about it.… To my thinking, perpetual peace is possible, but I don’t know how to put it.… Not by means of the balance of political power.…”

Prince Andrey was obviously not interested in these abstract discussions.

“One can’t always say all one thinks everywhere,
mon cher
. Come tell me, have you settled on anything at last? Are you going into the cavalry or the diplomatic service?” asked Prince Andrey, after a momentary pause.

Pierre sat on the sofa with his legs crossed under him.

“Can you believe it, I still don’t know. I don’t like either.”

“But you must decide on something; you know your father’s expecting it.”

At ten years old Pierre had been sent with an abbé as tutor to be educated abroad, and there he remained till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow, his father had dismissed the tutor and said to the young man: “Now you go to Petersburg, look about you and make your choice. I agree to anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vassily and here is money. Write and tell me everything; I will help you in everything.” Pierre had been three months already choosing a career and had not yet made his choice. It was of this choice Prince Andrey spoke to him now. Pierre rubbed his forehead.

“But he must be a freemason,” he said, meaning the abbé he had seen that evening.

“That’s all nonsense,” Prince Andrey pulled him up again; “we’d better talk of serious things. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”

“No, I haven’t; but this is what struck me and I wanted to talk to you about it. This war now is against Napoleon. If it were a war for freedom, I could have understood it, I would have been the first to go into the
army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world—that’s not right.”

Prince Andrey simply shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words. He looked as though one really could not answer such absurdities. But in reality it was hard to find any answer to this naïve question other than the answer Prince Andrey made. “If every one would only fight for his own convictions, there’d be no war,” he said.

“And a very good thing that would be too,” said Pierre.

Prince Andrey smiled ironically. “Very likely it would be a good thing, but it will never come to pass …”

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

“What for? I don’t know. Because I have to. Besides, I’m going …” he stopped. “I’m going because the life I lead here, this life is—not to my taste!”

There was the rustle of a woman’s dress in the next room. Prince Andrey started up, as it were pulling himself together, and his face assumed the expression it had worn in Anna Pavlovna’s drawing-room. Pierre dropped his legs down off the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown, and was wearing a house dress as fresh and elegant as the other had been. Prince Andrey got up and courteously set a chair for her.

“Why is it, I often wonder,” she began in French as always, while she hurriedly and fussily settled herself in the low chair, “why is it Annette never married? How stupid you gentlemen all are not to have married her. You must excuse me, but you really have no sense about women. What an argumentative person you are, Monsieur Pierre!”

“I’m still arguing with your husband; I can’t make out why he wants to go to the war,” said Pierre, addressing the princess without any of the affectation so common in the attitude of a young man to a young woman.

The princess shivered. Clearly Pierre’s words touched a tender spot.

“Ah, that’s what I say,” she said. “I can’t understand, I simply can’t understand why men can’t get on without war. Why is it we women want nothing of the sort? We don’t care for it. Come, you shall be the judge. I keep saying to him: here he is uncle’s adjutant, a most brilliant position. He’s so well known, so appreciated by every one. The other
day at the Apraxins’ I heard a lady ask: ‘So that is the famous Prince André? Upon my word!’ ” She laughed. “He’s asked everywhere. He could very easily be a flügel-adjutant. You know the Emperor has spoken very graciously to him. Annette and I were saying it would be quite easy to arrange it. What do you think?”

Pierre looked at Prince Andrey, and, noticing that his friend did not like this subject, made no reply.

“When are you starting?” he asked.

“Ah, don’t talk to me about that going away; don’t talk about it. I won’t even hear it spoken of,” said the princess in just the capriciously playful tone in which she had talked to Ippolit at the
soirée
, a tone utterly incongruous in her own home circle, where Pierre was like one of the family. “This evening when I thought all these relations so precious to me must be broken off.… And then, you know, André?” She looked significantly at her husband. “I’m afraid! I’m afraid!” she whispered, twitching her shoulder. Her husband looked at her as though he were surprised to observe that there was some one in the room beside himself and Pierre, and with frigid courtesy he addressed an inquiry to his wife.