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“Rousseau’s Contrat Social,” said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.
“I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas.”
“Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide,” again interjected an ironical voice.
“Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas Napoleon has retained in full force.”
“Liberty and equality,” said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words were, “high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it.”
Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment of Pierre’s outburst Anna Pávlovna, despite her social experience, was horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre’s sacrilegious words had not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.
“But, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” said she, “how do you explain the fact of a great man executing a duc—or even an ordinary man who—is innocent and untried?”
“I should like,” said the vicomte, “to ask how monsieur explains the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the conduct of a great man!”
“And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!” said the little princess, shrugging her shoulders.
“He’s a low fellow, say what you will,” remarked Prince Hippolyte.
Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled. His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled, his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by another—a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed to ask forgiveness.
The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested. All were silent.
“How do you expect him to answer you all at once?” said Prince Andrew. “Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor. So it seems to me.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of this reinforcement.
“One must admit,” continued Prince Andrew, “that Napoleon as a man was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but … but there are other acts which it is difficult to justify.”
Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness of Pierre’s remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time to go.
Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to attend, and asking them all to be seated began:
“I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to it. Excuse me, Vicomte—I must tell it in Russian or the point will be lost… .” And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia. Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their attention to his story.
“There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was her taste. And she had a lady’s maid, also big. She said …”
Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with difficulty.
“She said … Oh yes! She said, ‘Girl,’ to the maid, ‘put on a livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some calls.’”
Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna Pávlovna, did however smile.
“She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat and her long hair came down… .” Here he could contain himself no longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: “And the whole world knew… .”
And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pávlovna and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte’s social tact in so agreeably ending Pierre’s unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom, and when and where.
2 (#ulink_7076afc6-8d71-5b1e-a5dd-8af235175ba2) God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!
Chapter VI (#ulink_6330d438-34f3-56a5-b545-6d4ad3b6e00b)
Having thanked Anna Pávlovna for her charming soirée, the guests began to take their leave.
Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his own, the general’s three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression. Anna Pávlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: “I hope to see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my dear Monsieur Pierre.”
When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, “Opinions are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am.” And everyone, including Anna Pávlovna, felt this.
Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened indifferently to his wife’s chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty, pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.
“Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold,” said the little princess, taking leave of Anna Pávlovna. “It is settled,” she added in a low voice.
Anna Pávlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess’s sister-in-law.
“I rely on you, my dear,” said Anna Pávlovna, also in a low tone. “Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au revoir!”—and she left the hall.
Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his face close to her, began to whisper something.
Two footmen, the princess’s and his own, stood holding a shawl and a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.
“I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador’s,” said Prince Hippolyte—“so dull—It has been a delightful evening, has it not? Delightful!”
“They say the ball will be very good,” replied the princess, drawing up her downy little lip. “All the pretty women in society will be there.”
“Not all, for you will not be there; not all,” said Prince Hippolyte smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long time, as though embracing her.
Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at her husband. Prince Andrew’s eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did he seem.
“Are you ready?” he asked his wife, looking past her.
Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into the carriage.
“Princesse, au revoir,” cried he, stumbling with his tongue as well as with his feet.
The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone’s way.
“Allow me, sir,” said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold, disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.
“I am expecting you, Pierre,” said the same voice, but gently and affectionately.
The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte whom he had promised to take home.
“Well, mon cher,” said the vicomte, having seated himself beside Hippolyte in the carriage, “your little princess is very nice, very nice indeed, quite French,” and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte burst out laughing.
“Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,” continued the vicomte. “I pity the poor husband, that little officer who gives himself the airs of a monarch.”
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to know how to deal with them.”
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s study like one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
“What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,” said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
“That abbé is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the right light… . In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but—I do not know how to express it … not by a balance of political power… .”
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract conversation.
“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a diplomatist?” asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the other.”
“But you must decide on something! Your father expects it.”
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbé as tutor, and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow his father dismissed the abbé and said to the young man, “Now go to Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasíli, and here is money. Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything.” Pierre had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“But he must be a Freemason,” said he, referring to the abbé whom he had met that evening.
“That is all nonsense.” Prince Andrew again interrupted him, “let us talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”
“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is not right.”
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naïve question.
“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars,” he said.
“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about …”
“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.
“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going …” He paused. “I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit me!”
Chapter VII (#ulink_408b33c8-ed4a-560c-8bff-cde67fed54e9)
The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it had had in Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely placed a chair for her.
“How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married? How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!”
“And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their intercourse with young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the quick.
“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said she. “I don’t understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything of the kind, don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince Andrew?’ I did indeed.” She laughed. “He is so well received everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the emperor. You know the emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?”
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the conversation, gave no reply.
“When are you starting?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken of,” said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member. “Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must be broken off … and then you know, André …” (she looked significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of frigid politeness.
“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.
“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone in the country.”
“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
“Alone all the same, without my friends… . And he expects me not to be afraid.”
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the gist of the matter lay in that.
“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have …”
“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew. “You had better go.”
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no pity for me. Why is it?”
“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave like that six months ago?”
“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because … I assure you I myself have experienced … and so … because … No, excuse me! An outsider is out of place here … No, don’t distress yourself … Goodbye!”
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without restraining her angry tears.
“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch which indicates that patience is exhausted.
