War and Peace
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Published by Planet eBook . Visit the site to download free eBooks of classic literature, books and novels. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial 3.0 United States License . 3 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com BOOK ONE: 1805 War and Peace 4 Chapter I ‘Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family es- tates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that AntichristI really believe he is AntichristI will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened yousit down and tell me all the news.’ It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suf- fering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite. All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows: ‘If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10Annette Scherer.’ ‘Heavens! what a virulent attack!’ replied the prince, 5 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa. ‘First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s mind at rest,’ said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which in- difference and even irony could be discerned. ‘Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?’ said Anna Pavlovna. ‘You are staying the whole evening, I hope?’ ‘And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,’ said the prince. ‘My daughter is coming for me to take me there.’ ‘I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.’ ‘If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off,’ said the prince, who, like a wound- up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed. ‘Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about No- vosiltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.’ ‘What can one say about it?’ replied the prince in a cold, War and Peace 6 listless tone. ‘What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.’ Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor re- peating a stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and im- pulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the ex- pectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continu- al consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct. In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna burst out: ‘Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t under- stand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high voca- tion and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more ter- rible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alex- 7 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com ander’s loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for him- self, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have prom- ised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!’ She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity. ‘I think,’ said the prince with a smile, ‘that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?’ ‘In a moment. A propos,’ she added, becoming calm again, ‘I am expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected with the Mont- morencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?’ ‘I shall be delighted to meet them,’ said the prince. ‘But tell me,’ he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question he was about War and Peace 8 to ask was the chief motive of his visit, ‘is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor creature.’ Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it for the baron. Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with. ‘Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,’ was all she said, in a dry and mourn- ful tone. As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna’s face sud- denly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this oc- curred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness. The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitu- al to her, Anna Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said: ‘Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.’ The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude. 9 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com ‘I often think,’ she continued after a short pause, draw- ing nearer to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate conversation‘I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like him,’ she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. ‘Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.’ And she smiled her ecstatic smile. ‘I can’t help it,’ said the prince. ‘Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity.’ ‘Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves’ (and her face assumed its melancholy expression), ‘he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were pitied...’ The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him sig- nificantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned. ‘What would you have me do?’ he said at last. ‘You know I did all a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference between them.’ He said this smiling in a way more natural and an- imated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant. ‘And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach War and Peace 10 you with,’ said Anna Pavlovna, looking up pensively. ‘I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be helped!’ He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated. ‘Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?’ she asked. ‘They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that weakness in my- self as yet,I know a little person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkon- skaya.’ Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that he was consider- ing this information. ‘Do you know,’ he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of his thoughts, ‘that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,’ he went on after a pause, ‘what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this?’ Present- ly he added: ‘That’s what we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?’ ‘Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the coun- try. He is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army under the late Emperor, and was nick- named ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is 11 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov’s and will be here tonight.’ ‘Listen, dear Annette,’ said the prince, suddenly tak- ing Anna Pavlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. ‘Arrange that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slaveslafe wigh an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family and that’s all I want.’ And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction. ‘Attendez,’ said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, ‘I’ll speak to Lise, young Bolkonski’s wife, this very evening, and per- haps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old maid.’ War and Peace 12 Chapter II Anna Pavlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasili’s daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her father to the ambassa- dor’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasili’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbe Mo- rio and many others had also come. *The most fascinating woman in Petersburg. To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, ‘You have not yet seen my aunt,’ or ‘You do not know my aunt?’ and very gravely conducted him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who had come sailing in from an- other room as soon as the guests began to arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna Pavlovna mentioned each one’s name and then left them. Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pavlovna 13 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com observed these greetings with mournful and solemn inter- est and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, ‘who, thank God, was better today.’ And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at hav- ing performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the whole evening. The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always the case with a thoroughly at- tractive woman, her defectthe shortness of her upper lip and her half-open mouthseemed to be her own special and pecu- liar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her, and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that day. The little princess went round the table with quick, short, swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spread- ing out her dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was doing was a pleasure to herself and to all War and Peace 14 around her. ‘I have brought my work,’ said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all present. ‘Mind, An- nette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick on me,’ she added, turning to her hostess. ‘You wrote that it was to be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed.’ And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace- trimmed, dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast. ‘Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone else,’ replied Anna Pavlovna. ‘You know,’ said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in French, turning to a general, ‘my husband is de- serting me? He is going to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?’ she added, addressing Prince Vasi- li, and without waiting for an answer she turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene. ‘What a delightful woman this little princess is!’ said Prince Vasili to Anna Pavlovna. One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known grandee of Catherine’s time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with the nod she accorded to the lowest hierar- chy in her drawing room. But in spite of this lowest-grade 15 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com greeting, a look of anxiety and fear, as at the sight of some- thing too large and unsuited to the place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant and natural, expression which distinguished him from ev- eryone else in that drawing room. ‘It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor invalid,’ said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt as she conducted him to her. Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and contin- ued to look round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance. Anna Pavlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: ‘Do you know the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man.’ ‘Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting but hardly feasible.’ ‘You think so?’ rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbe’s plan chimerical. War and Peace 16 ‘We will talk of it later,’ said Anna Pavlovna with a smile. And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave, she resumed her duties as hostess and contin- ued to listen and watch, ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to flag. As the foreman of a spin- ning mill, when he has set the hands to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna Pav- lovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a too-noisy group, and by a word or slight re- arrangement kept the conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid these cares her anxi- ety about Pierre was evident. She kept an anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to lis- ten to what was being said there, and again when he passed to another group whose center was the abbe. Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna Pavlovna’s was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he was always ex- pecting to hear something very profound. At last he came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young people are fond of doing. 17 Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com Chapter III Anna Pavlovna’s reception was in full swing. The spin- dles hummed steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt, beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili’s daughter, and the little Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pavlovna. The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found him- self. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d’hotel serves up as a spe- cially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pav- lovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mor- temart immediately began discussing the murder of the Duc d’Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were War and Peace 18 Yüklə 9,73 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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