War And Peace: Book 3 - CHAPTER II

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

IN THE DECEMBER of 1805, the old Prince Nikolay Andreitch Bolkonsky received

a letter from Prince Vassily, announcing that he intended to visit him with his

son. (“I am going on an inspection tour, and of course a hundred versts is only

a step out of the way for me to visit you, my deeply-honoured benefactor,” he

wrote. “My Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, and I hope you

will permit him to express to you in person the profound veneration that,

following his father's example, he entertains for you.”)

“Well, there's no need to bring Marie out, it seems; suitors come to us of

themselves,” the little princess said heedlessly on hearing of this. Prince

Nikolay Andreitch scowled and said nothing.

A fortnight after receiving the letter, Prince Vassily's servants arrived one

evening in advance of him, and the following day he came himself with his

son.

Old Bolkonsky had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vassily's character,

and this opinion had grown stronger of late since Prince Vassily had, under the

new reigns of Paul and Alexander, advanced to high rank and honours. Now from

the letter and the little princess's hints, he saw what the object of the visit

was, and his poor opinion of Prince Vassily passed into a feeling of ill-will

and contempt in the old prince's heart. He snorted indignantly whenever he spoke

of him. On the day of Prince Vassily's arrival, the old prince was particularly

discontented and out of humour. Whether he was out of humour because Prince

Vassily was coming, or whether he was particularly displeased at Prince

Vassily's coming because he was out of humour, no one can say. But he was out of

humour, and early in the morning Tihon had dissuaded the architect from going to

the prince with his report.

“Listen how he's walking,” said Tihon, calling the attention of the architect

to the sound of the prince's footsteps. “Stepping flat on his heels … then we

know …”

At nine o'clock, however, the old prince went out for a walk, as usual,

wearing his short, velvet, fur-lined cloak with a sable collar and a sable cap.

There had been a fall of snow on the previous evening. The path along which

Prince Nikolay Andreitch walked to the conservatory had been cleared; there were

marks of a broom in the swept snow, and a spade had been left sticking in the

crisp bank of snow that bordered the path on both sides. The prince walked

through the conservatories, the servants' quarters, and the out-buildings,

frowning and silent.

“Could a sledge drive up?” he asked the respectful steward, who was escorting

him to the house, with a countenance and manners like his own.

“The snow is deep, your excellency. I gave orders for the avenue to be swept

too.”

The prince nodded, and was approaching the steps. “Glory to Thee, O Lord!”

thought the steward, “the storm has passed over!”

“It would have been hard to drive up, your excellency,” added the steward.

“So I hear, your excellency, there's a minister coming to visit your

excellency?” The prince turned to the steward and stared with scowling eyes at

him.

“Eh? A minister? What minister? Who gave you orders?” he began in his shrill,

cruel voice. “For the princess my daughter, you do not clear the way, but for

the minister you do! For me there are no ministers!”

“Your excellency, I supposed …”

“You supposed,” shouted the prince, articulating with greater and greater

haste and incoherence. “You supposed … Brigands! blackguards! … I'll teach you

to suppose,” and raising his stick he waved it at Alpatitch, and would have hit

him, had not the steward instinctively shrunk back and escaped the blow. “You

supposed … Blackguards! …” he still cried hurriedly. But although Alpatitch,

shocked at his own insolence in dodging the blow, went closer to the prince,

with his bald head bent humbly before him, or perhaps just because of this, the

prince did not lift the stick again, and still shouting, “Blackguards! … fill up

the road …” he ran to his room.

Princess Marya and Mademoiselle Bourienne stood, waiting for the old prince

before dinner, well aware that he was out of temper. Mademoiselle Bourienne's

beaming countenance seemed to say, “I know nothing about it, I am just the same

as usual,” while Princess Marya stood pale and terrified with downcast eyes.

What made it harder for Princess Marya was that she knew that she ought to act

like Mademoiselle Bourienne at such times, but she could not do it. She felt,

“If I behave as if I did not notice it, he'll think I have no sympathy with him.

If I behave as if I were depressed and out of humour myself, he'll say (as

indeed often happened) that I'm sulky …” and so on.

The prince glanced at his daughter's scared face and snorted.

“Stuff!” or perhaps “stupid!” he muttered. “And the other is not here!

they've been telling tales to her already,” he thought, noticing that the little

princess was not in the dining-room.

“Where's Princess Liza?” he asked. “In hiding?”

“She's not quite well,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne with a bright smile; “she

is not coming down. In her condition it is only to be expected.”

“H'm! h'm! kh! kh!” growled the prince, and he sat down to the table. He

thought his plate was not clean: he pointed to a mark on it and threw it away.

Tihon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little princess was quite well,

but she was in such overwhelming terror of the prince, that on hearing he was in

a bad temper, she had decided not to come in.

“I am afraid for my baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne; “God knows

what might not be the result of a fright.”

The little princess, in fact, lived at Bleak Hills in a state of continual

terror of the old prince, and had an aversion for him, of which she was herself

unconscious, so completely did terror overbear every other feeling. There was

the same aversion on the prince's side, too; but in his case it was swallowed up

in contempt. As she went on staying at Bleak Hills, the little princess became

particularly fond of Mademoiselle Bourienne; she spent her days with her, begged

her to sleep in her room, and often talked of her father-in-law, and criticised

him to her.

“We have company coming, prince,” said Mademoiselle Bourienne, her rosy

fingers unfolding her dinner-napkin. “His excellency Prince Kuragin with his

son, as I have heard say?” she said in a tone of inquiry.

“H'm! … his excellence is an upstart. I got him his place in the

college,” the old prince said huffily. “And what his son's coming for, I can't

make out. Princess Lizaveta Karlovna and Princess Marya can tell us, maybe; I

don't know what he's bringing his son here for. I don't want him.” And he looked

at his daughter, who turned crimson.

“Unwell, eh? Scared of the minister, as that blockhead Alpatitch called him

to-day?”

“Non, mon père.”

Unsuccessful as Mademoiselle Bourienne had been in the subject she had

started, she did not desist, but went on prattling away about the

conservatories, the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and after the soup

the prince subsided.

After dinner he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess was

sitting at a little table gossiping with Masha, her maid. She turned pale on

seeing her father-in-law.

The little princess was greatly changed. She looked ugly rather than pretty

now. Her cheeks were sunken, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes were

hollow.

“Yes, a sort of heaviness,” she said in answer to the prince's inquiry how

she felt.

“Isn't there anything you need?”

“Non, merci, mon père.”

“Oh, very well then, very well.”

He went out and into the waiting-room. Alpatitch was standing there with

downcast head.

“Filled up the road again?”

“Yes, your excellency; for God's sake, forgive me, it was simply a

blunder.”

The prince cut him short with his unnatural laugh.

“Oh, very well, very well.” He held out his hand, which Alpatitch kissed, and

then he went to his study.

In the evening Prince Vassily arrived. He was met on the way by the coachmen

and footmen of the Bolkonskys, who with shouts dragged his carriages and sledge

to the lodge, over the road, which had been purposely obstructed with snow

again.

Prince Vassily and Anatole were conducted to separate apartments.

Taking off his tunic, Anatole sat with his elbows on the table, on a corner

of which he fixed his handsome, large eyes with a smiling, unconcerned stare.

All his life he had looked upon as an uninterrupted entertainment, which some

one or other was, he felt, somehow bound to provide for him. In just the same

spirit he had looked at his visit to the cross old gentleman and his rich and

hideous daughter. It might all, according to his anticipations, turn out very

jolly and amusing. “And why not get married, if she has such a lot of money?

That never comes amiss,” thought Anatole.

He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance that had become

habitual with him, and with his characteristic expression of all-conquering

good-humour, he walked into his father's room, holding, his head high. Two

valets were busily engaged in dressing Prince Vassily; he was looking about him

eagerly, and nodded gaily to his son, as he entered with an air that said, “Yes,

that's just how I wanted to see you looking.”

“Come, joking apart, father, is she so hideous? Eh?” he asked in French, as

though reverting to a subject more than once discussed on the journey.

“Nonsense! The great thing for you is to try and be respectful and sensible

with the old prince.”

“If he gets nasty, I'm off,” said Anatole. “I can't stand those old

gentlemen. Eh?”

“Remember that for you everything depends on it.”

Meanwhile, in the feminine part of the household not only the arrival of the

minister and his son was already known, but the appearance of both had been

minutely described. Princess Marya was sitting alone in her room doing her

utmost to control her inner emotion.

“Why did they write, why did Liza tell me about it? Why, it cannot be!” she

thought, looking at herself in the glass. “How am I to go into the drawing-room?

Even if I like him, I could never be myself with him now.” The mere thought of

her father's eyes reduced her to terror. The little princess and Mademoiselle

Bourienne had already obtained all necessary information from the maid, Masha;

they had learned what a handsome fellow the minister's son was, with rosy cheeks

and black eye-brows; how his papa had dragged his legs upstairs with difficulty,

while he, like a young eagle, had flown up after him three steps at a time. On

receiving these items of information, the little princess and Mademoiselle

Bourienne, whose eager voices were audible in the corridor, went into Princess

Marya's room.

“They are come, Marie, do you know?” said the little princess, waddling in

and sinking heavily into an armchair. She was not wearing the gown in which she

had been sitting in the morning, but had put on one of her best dresses. Her

hair had been carefully arranged, and her face was full of an eager excitement,

which did not, however, conceal its wasted and pallid look. In the smart clothes

which she had been used to wear in Petersburg in society, the loss of her good

looks was even more noticeable. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, had put some hardly

perceptible finishing touches to her costume, which made her fresh, pretty face

even more attractive.

“What, and you are staying just as you are, dear princess. They will come in

a minute to tell us the gentlemen are in the drawing-room,” she began. “We shall

have to go down, and you are doing nothing at all to your dress.”

The little princess got up from her chair, rang for the maid, and hurriedly

and eagerly began to arrange what Princess Marya was to wear, and to put her

ideas into practice. Princess Marya's sense of personal dignity was wounded by

her own agitation at the arrival of her suitor, and still more was she mortified

that her two companions should not even conceive that she ought not to be so

agitated. To have told them how ashamed she was of herself and of them would

have been to betray her own excitement. Besides, to refuse to be dressed up, as

they suggested, would have been exposing herself to reiterated raillery and

insistence. She flushed; her beautiful eyes grew dim; her face was suffused with

patches of crimson; and with the unbeautiful, victimised expression which was

the one most often seen on her face, she abandoned herself to Mademoiselle

Bourienne and Liza. Both women exerted themselves with perfect sincerity

to make her look well. She was so plain that the idea of rivalry with her could

never have entered their heads. Consequently it was with perfect sincerity, in

the na