War And Peace: Book 4 - CHAPTER II

作者: Leo Tolstoy

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Author: Leo Tolstoy

ON HIS RETURN to Moscow from the army, Nikolay Rostov was received by his

family as a hero, as the best of sons, their idolised Nikolenka; by his

relations, as a charming, agreeable, and polite young man; by his acquaintances

as a handsome lieutenant of hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches

in Moscow.

All Moscow was acquainted with the Rostovs; the old count had plenty of money

that year, because all his estates had been mortgaged, and so Nikolenka, who

kept his own racehorse, and wore the most fashionable riding-breeches of a

special cut, unlike any yet seen in Moscow, and the most fashionable boots, with

extremely pointed toes, and little silver spurs, was able to pass his time very

agreeably. After the first brief interval of adapting himself to the old

conditions of life, Rostov felt very happy at being home again. He felt that he

had grown up and become a man. His despair at failing in a Scripture

examination, his borrowing money from Gavrilo for his sledge-drivers, his stolen

kisses with Sonya—all that he looked back upon as childishness from which he was

now immeasurably remote. Now he was a lieutenant of hussars with a

silver-braided jacket, and a soldier's cross of St. George, he had a horse in

training for a race, and kept company with well-known racing men, elderly and

respected persons. He had struck up an acquaintance too, with a lady living in a

boulevard, whom he used to visit in the evening. He led the mazurka at the

Arharovs' balls, talked to Field-Marshal Kamensky about the war, and used

familiar forms of address to a colonel of forty, to whom he had been introduced

by Denisov.

His passion for the Tsar flagged a little in Moscow, as he did not see him,

and had no chance of seeing him all that time. But still he often used to talk

about the Emperor and his love for him, always with a suggestion in his tone

that he was not saying all that there was in his feeling for the Emperor,

something that every one could not understand; and with his whole heart he

shared the general feeling in Moscow of adoration for the Emperor Alexander

Pavlovitch, who was spoken of at that time in Moscow by the designation of the

“angel incarnate.”

During this brief stay in Moscow, before his return to the army, Rostov did

not come nearer to Sonya, but on the contrary drifted further away from her. She

was very pretty and charming, and it was obvious that she was passionately in

love with him. But he was at that stage of youth when there seems so much to do,

that one has not time to pay attention to love, and a young man dreads being

bound, and prizes his liberty, which he wants for so much else. When he thought

about Sonya during this stay at Moscow, he said to himself: “Ah! there are many,

many more like her to come, and there are many of them somewhere now, though I

don't know them yet. There's plenty of time before me to think about love when I

want to, but I have not the time now.” Moreover, it seemed to him that feminine

society was somewhat beneath his manly dignity. He went to balls, and into

ladies' society with an affection of doing so against his will. Races, the

English club, carousals with Denisov, and the nocturnal visits that followed—all

that was different, all that was the correct thing for a dashing young

hussar.

At the beginning of March the old count, Ilya Andreivitch Rostov, was very

busily engaged in arranging a dinner at the English Club, to be given in honour

of Prince Bagration.

The count, in his dressing-gown, was continually walking up and down in the

big hall, seeing the club manager, the celebrated Feoktista, and the head cook,

and giving them instructions relative to asparagus, fresh cucumbers,

strawberries, veal, and fish, for Prince Bagration's dinner. From the day of its

foundation, the count had been a member of the club, and was its steward. He had

been entrusted with the organisation of the banquet to Bagration by the club,

because it would have been hard to find any one so well able to organise a

banquet on a large and hospitable scale, and still more hard to find any one so

able and willing to advance his own money, if funds were needed, for the

organisation of the fête. The cook and the club manager listened to the count's

orders with good-humoured faces, because they knew that with no one better than

with him could one make a handsome profit out of a dinner costing several

thousands.

“Well, then, mind there are scallops, scallops in pie-crust, you know.”

“Cold entrées, I suppose—three? …” questioned the cook.

The count pondered.

“Couldn't do with less, three … mayonnaise, one,” he said, crooking

his finger.

“Then it's your excellency's order to take the big sturgeons?” asked the

manager.

“Yes; it can't be helped, we must take them, if they won't knock the price

down. Ah, mercy on us, I was forgetting. Of course we must have another

entrée on the table. Ah, good heavens!” he clutched at his head. “And

who's going to get me the flowers? Mitenka! Hey, Mitenka! You gallop, Mitenka,”

he said to the steward who came in at his call, “you gallop off to the

Podmoskovny estate” (the count's property in the environs of Moscow), “and tell

Maksimka the gardener to set the serfs to work to get decorations from the

greenhouses. Tell him everything from his conservatories is to be brought here,

and is to be packed in felt. And that I'm to have two hundred pots here by

Friday.”

After giving further and yet further directions of all sorts, he was just

going off to the countess to rest from his labours, but he recollected something

else, turned back himself, brought the cook and manager back, and began giving

orders again. They heard in the doorway a light, manly tread and a jingling of

spurs, and the young count came in, handsome and rosy, with his darkening

moustache, visibly sleeker and in better trim for his easy life in Moscow.

“Ah, my boy! my head's in a whirl,” said the old gentleman, with a somewhat

shamefaced smile at his son. “You might come to my aid! We have still the

singers to get, you see. The music is all settled, but shouldn't we order some

gypsy singers? You military gentlemen are fond of that sort of thing.”

“Upon my word, papa, I do believe that Prince Bagration made less fuss over

getting ready for the battle of Sch

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