by Leo Tolstoy
'All gone!'
He tossed the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly. Dolokhov jumped down from the window stinking of rum.
'Well done! Bravo! That's a real bet! You're a right devil, you are!' came the shouts from all sides.
The Englishman took out his purse and counted out the money. Dolokhov stood there frowning and silent. Pierre leapt up on to the window-sill.
'Gentlemen! Anybody betting? I can do that!' he shouted suddenly. 'I don't even need a bet. No, I don't. Tell them to get me a bottle. I'll do it . . . Just get me a bottle . . .'
'Go on! Let him do it!' said Dolokhov with a grin.
'What, are you mad? No one will let you. You get dizzy walking downstairs,' came the various protests.
'I'll drink it. Give me that bottle of rum,' roared Pierre, thumping the table with a deliberate, drunken gesture, and he climbed up into the well of the window. People snatched at his arms, but he was so strong he sent them flying if they came anywhere near.
'No, you'll never talk him out of it like that,' said Anatole. 'Hang on. I know how to fool him . . . Listen, Pierre, I accept your bet, but for tomorrow night. Right now we're all going on to you know where.'
'Right, let's go!' yelled Pierre. 'Let's go! We can take Bruin with us . . .'
And he grabbed the bear, hugged it, lifted it right off the floor and took it waltzing round the room.
CHAPTER 7
Prince Vasily kept the promise he had made to Princess Drubetskoy at Anna Pavlovna's soiree, when she had asked for his help with her only son, Boris. His case had been presented to the Emperor, and though it was not to be regarded as a precedent, he was transferred to the Semyonovsky guards regiment as an ensign. But Boris did not get the post of aide or attache in Kutuzov's service despite Anna Mikhaylovna's best efforts and entreaties. Shortly after the evening at Anna Pavlovna's, Anna Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow, and went straight to her rich relatives, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when she was in Moscow. It was with this family that her dear little Boris, who had only recently entered a regiment of the line and was now transferring to the guards, had been brought up since childhood and had lived for many years. The guards had left Petersburg on the 10th of August, and her son, after staying behind in Moscow to get kitted out, was to catch up with them on the road to Radzivilov.
The Rostovs were enjoying a name-day18 celebration for both mother and younger daughter, their two Natalyas. Since early morning a constant stream of well-wishers in six-horse carriages had been driving to and from Countess Rostov's mansion on Povarsky Street, which was famous throughout Moscow. The countess was sitting in the drawing-room with her lovely elder daughter receiving the many visitors who kept turning up one after another.
A woman of about forty-five with a narrow, rather oriental face, the countess was clearly exhausted from bearing children - she had had twelve. Her slowness of movement and speech, deriving from physical weakness, lent her an air of importance which inspired respect. Princess Anna Mikhaylovna Drubetskoy, as a family member, sat with them assisting in the business of receiving and entertaining the guests. The youngsters were in the back rooms, not feeling obliged to play any part in receiving visitors. The count welcomed the visitors, saw them out and issued dinner invitations to every last one of them.
'I really am most grateful to you, my dear,' he said to every visitor, making no distinctions for persons of higher or lower social standing, 'both for myself and my two dear name-day ladies. Do please come to dinner, or I shall be offended, my dear. I am inviting you most sincerely on behalf of all the family, my dear lady.' These words, always accompanied by exactly the same expression on his round, cheery, clean-shaven face, and the same firm handshake and repeated short bows, were spoken to all without exception or variation. When he had seen one guest out the count would return to some gentleman or lady who was still in the drawing-room. Moving the chairs up, and adopting the manner of a man who knows about life and enjoys it, he would sit down, spread his legs out like a youngster, put his hands on his knees, and rock to and fro with some dignity as he indulged in a little weather-forecasting or dispensed advice about health, some of this in Russian, some of it in very bad but confident French. Then he would get up again, and with the air of a tired man still zealous in the call of duty, he would escort guests to the door, rearranging the grey strands over his bald patch, and again he would issue invitations to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the vestibule, he would walk through the conservatory and the butler's room and enter a great marble hall, where a table was being set for eighty guests. There he would inspect the waiters bringing in the silver and the china, setting out tables and unfolding damask linen for them; he would summon Dmitry, the young man of quality who acted as his steward and general assistant, and say to him, 'Now then, Mitenka, make sure everything's all right. Yes, yes, you will make sure, won't you?' Then he would take great pleasure in surveying the immense table opened out to its full extent, and add, 'What matters - is the service . . . That's the secret . . .' And with a sigh of satisfaction off he went again in the direction of the drawing-room.
'Madame Marya Karagin and her daughter!' boomed the countess's huge footman in his deep bass voice at the drawing-room door. The countess thought for a moment, and took a pinch of snuff from a gold snuff-box bearing her husband's portrait.
'I'm worn out with all these callers,' she said. 'Well, this is the last one I'm seeing. Oh, she's so affected. Show her in,' she said in a voice full of sadness, as though she were saying, 'Go on, then, finish me off!'
Into the drawing-room, with skirts rustling, walked a tall, stout, grandiose lady and her round-faced, smiling daughter.
'My dear Countess, it's been such a long time . . . She's been laid up, poor child . . . It was at the Razumovskys' ball . . . and the Countess Apraksin . . . I was so glad . . .' The women's voices could be heard chattering away, interrupting each other and blending in with the sound of dresses rustling and chairs scraping. It was the kind of conversation calculated to last just long enough for the caller to get up at the first pause, skirts again rustling, murmur, 'I'm so delighted . . . Mamma's health . . . and the Countess Apraksin . . .' and walk out again, still rustling, into the vestibule to don cloak or coat and drive away. The conversation dealt with the latest news in town: the illness of the wealthy old Count Bezukhov, who had cut such a dashing figure in Catherine's time,19 and his illegitimate son, Pierre, who had behaved so badly at one of Anna Pavlovna's soirees. 'I'm so sorry for the poor count,' said the visitor. 'His health has been so poor, and now this nasty business with his son. It'll be the death of him!'
'What's all this?' asked the countess, as if she had no idea what the lady was saying, though she had heard about the cause of Count Bezukhov's distress at least fifteen times already.
'This is what modern education does for you! When he was abroad,' the visitor continued, 'this young man was given a free rein, and now in Petersburg, so they say, he's been doing such terrible things they've had to send him away under police guard.'
'You don't say so!' said the countess.
'He's in with the wrong set,' put in Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. 'He and Prince Vasily's son, and apparently another young man called Dolokhov, have . . . well, heaven knows what dreadful things they've been up to. And they've both paid the price. Dolokhov has been reduced to the ranks, and Bezukhov's son has been banished to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father has managed to hush things up for him. But he's been sent away too.'
'Why, what did they do?' asked the countess.
'They're absolute scoundrels, especially Dolokhov,' said the visitor. 'He's the son of Marya Dolokhov, such a respectable lady, you know, but there you are! Just imagine, the three of them somehow got hold of a bear, they put it in a carriage and went off with it to see some actresses. The police rushed in to stop them. They got a police officer, tied him back to back with the bear and dropped the bear into the Moika. The bear swam about with the policeman on his back.'
/> 'That policeman, my dear, what a picture!' cried the count, helpless with laughter.
'Oh, how shocking! Count, this is no laughing matter.' But the ladies couldn't help laughing too.
'They only just managed to save the wretched man,' the visitor went on. 'And that's the clever sort of trick the son of Count Kirill Bezukhov gets up to!' she added. 'And people said he was so well educated and clever. This is what foreign education has done for us. I hope no one will receive him here, in spite of his wealth. They tried to introduce him to me. I refused point-blank. I have daughters.'
'What makes you say this young man is so wealthy?' asked the countess, turning away from the girls, who at once pretended not to be listening. 'All his children are illegitimate. I believe Pierre is also . . . illegitimate.'
The visitor waved her hand. 'He has a score of them, I believe.'
Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened, clearly wanting to demonstrate her contacts and her knowledge of society matters. 'I'll tell you what it's all about,' she said in a meaningful half-whisper. 'Count Kirill's reputation is something we all know. He's lost count of how many children he has, but this Pierre has always been his favourite.'
'What a handsome man he was,' said the countess, 'only a year ago! A better-looking man I've never seen.'
'He's very different now,' said Anna Mikhaylovna. 'But what I wanted to say was this,' she went on. 'On his wife's side the direct heir to the whole estate is Prince Vasily, but the father is very fond of Pierre. He took trouble over his education, and he has written a letter to the Emperor . . . so if he dies (he's in such a bad state that it's expected any moment, and Lorrain has come down from Petersburg), nobody knows whether that huge fortune will go to Pierre or Prince Vasily. Forty thousand serfs and millions of roubles. I know it's true - Prince Vasily has told me himself. And Kirill happens to be a third cousin of mine on my mother's side. And he's Boris's godfather too,' she added, apparently attaching no significance to this circumstance.
'Prince Vasily arrived in Moscow yesterday. Some sort of inspection, I was told,' said the visitor.
'Yes, but just between the two of us,' said the princess, 'that's just an excuse. He's really come to see Count Kirill, knowing he's in such a bad way.'
'Well, really, my dear, that was a splendid bit of fun,' said the count, and noticing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to the young ladies. 'That policeman. What a picture! I can just see him.'
And acting out the role of a policeman waving his arms, he boomed out his rich bass laughter, his whole body shaking with mirth, as people do after a good meal, and more so after a good drink. 'Oh, please, you must come to dinner with us,' he said.
CHAPTER 8
For a while nobody spoke. The countess was smiling pleasantly at her lady guest without disguising the fact that she would not be greatly put out if she were to get up and go. The visiting daughter was fidgeting with her gown and looking inquiringly at her mother when suddenly they all heard a racket from the next room as several boys and girls ran to the door, bumping into a chair and knocking it over with a bang, and a girl of thirteen dashed in with something tucked into her short muslin frock. She came to a halt in the middle of the room, evidently having misjudged everything, gone too far and burst in on them. And there behind her in the doorway stood a student with a crimson collar on his coat, a young guards officer, a fifteen-year-old girl and a fat little boy with rosy cheeks, dressed in a child's smock.
The count jumped up, swayed a little from one side to the other, held his arms out wide and put them right round the little girl who had run in.
'Here she is!' he cried, laughing. 'A happy name-day, darling!'
'My dear child, there is a time for everything,' said the countess, pretending to be firm. 'You do spoil that child, Ilya,' she added to her husband.
'Good morning, my dear. Many happy returns,' said the visitor. 'What a delightful child!' she added, turning to the mother.
The dark-eyed young girl was not pretty - her mouth was too big - but she was full of life, and with her childish uncovered shoulders and her bodice slipping down from all that running, her curly black hair tossed back, her slender bare arms and little legs in lace-trimmed drawers and open slippers on her feet, she was at that charming age when the girl is no longer a child, and the child is not yet a young girl. She wriggled free from her father, ran across to her mother, ignoring her rebuke, hid her flushed face in her mother's lace veil and laughed. She was laughing at nothing and she burbled something about her doll, pulling it out from the folds of her frock.
'See? . . . Dolly . . . Mimi . . . You see?' And Natasha found the whole thing irresistibly amusing. She fell upon her mother, and laughed and laughed, so loudly that everybody joined in, even the starchy visitor - they couldn't help it.
'Come on, off you go, you and your little monster!' said her mother, pushing her daughter away and pretending to be annoyed. 'This is my younger daughter,' she said to the visitor. Natasha, looked out from her mother's lace veil for a minute, peeped up at her through tears of laughter, and buried her face again.
The visiting lady, compelled to admire this domestic scene, felt obliged to take some part in it. She turned to Natasha and said, 'Tell me, my dear - who is Mimi? Is she your baby?' Natasha didn't like this patronizing baby-talk from the visiting lady. She stared at her morosely and said nothing.
By now all the younger generation - Boris, the officer, Anna Mikhaylovna's son; Nikolay, the count's eldest son, a student; Sonya, the count's niece, fifteen years old; and little Petya, his younger son - had spread themselves across the drawing-room, and were all too obviously trying to contain within the bounds of decorum the excitement and glee which still showed in their features. Out there in the back rooms where they had been before they had come rushing in, the conversation had obviously been much more fun than the small-talk in here, nothing but scandal, the weather and Countess Apraksin. Once or twice they glanced at each another and could hardly contain their laughter.
The two young men, student and officer, were the same age and had been friends since childhood. Both were good-looking, but in different ways. Boris was a tall, fair-haired youth with fine regular features, a handsome face and a look of composure. Nikolay was a small young man with a shock of hair and an innocent look. His upper lip showed the beginnings of a black moustache, and his whole face expressed energy and enthusiasm. He had blushed as he came into the room, clearly trying to think of something to say and not being able to do so. Boris, by contrast, was immediately at his ease; he talked fluently and amusingly about Mimi, the doll - he had known her as a young girl before her nose got broken, and my, how she had grown up during the five years he had known her, and by the way she had a great crack right across her skull. He said all this and then looked at Natasha. She turned away, glanced at her younger brother, who had screwed up his face and was shaking with suppressed laughter; no longer able to restrain herself, she leapt up and sprinted out of the room as fast as her little legs could go. Boris did not laugh.
'Mama, weren't you about to go too? Do you want the carriage?' he asked, smiling at his mother.
'Yes, do go and tell them to get it ready,' she said with a smile. Boris followed Natasha slowly out through the door. The fat little boy ran angrily after them, apparently annoyed that his busy life had been so rudely interrupted.
CHAPTER 9
The only youngsters left in the drawing-room - apart from the countess's elder daughter, who was four years older than her sister and had assumed grown-up status, and also the young lady visitor - were Nikolay and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slim, petite brunette, with gentle eyes shaded by long lashes, a thick black braid of hair double-coiled round her head, with a sallow hue to her face and more so to her neck, and rather skinny bare arms that were sinewy but nicely shaped. There was a smoothness in the way she moved, a gentle suppleness in her little limbs and a kind of wary aloofness that suggested a pretty half-grown kitten that would one day turn into
a lovely cat. She seemed to have thought it necessary to get involved in the general conversation if only by smiling, but now, in spite of herself, she found her eyes under their long thick lashes turning to her cousin, who was going off into the army. Her girlish passion bordering on adoration was so obvious that her smile didn't fool anyone; it was clear that the kitten had crouched down only to pounce faster than ever on her cousin and tease him the moment they could get out of the drawing-room like Boris and Natasha.
'Yes, my dear,' said the old count, addressing the visitor and pointing at Nikolay, 'now that his friend Boris has got his commission, because of their friendship he doesn't want to be left behind, so he's giving up university and his poor old father. He's going into the army, my dear. There was a place waiting for him in the Archives, and all that . . . But that's friendship for you, isn't it?'
'They do say war has been declared,' said the visitor.
'They've been saying that for ages,' said the count. 'They'll say it again lots of times before they stop. But that's friendship for you, my dear!' he repeated. 'He's joining the hussars.'
The visitor shook her head, at a loss for words.
'It's nothing to do with friendship,' Nikolay blustered, exploding as if this was a dreadful insult. 'It's not friendship - I just want to be in the army. It's my vocation.'
He turned to look at his cousin and the young lady visitor; they returned his look with a smile of approval.
'Colonel Schubert's dining with us tonight. He's with the Pavlograd hussars. Been here on leave, and he's taking Nikolay back with him. Can't be helped,' said the count, shrugging his shoulders and making a joke out of something that had obviously caused him a lot of distress.
'Papa, I've told you already,' said his son, 'if you really don't want me to go, I'll stay. But I know I'm useless anywhere except in the army. I'm not a diplomat or a civil servant. I'm no good at hiding my feelings,' he said, keeping the flirtatious eye of a handsome young man on Sonya and the young lady.