by Leo Tolstoy
My father has not spoken to me of any suitor; all he has said is that he received a letter and has been expecting a visit from Prince Vasily. In relation to any marriage scheme concerning me, I can tell you, my dear and excellent friend, that I consider marriage to be a divine institution to which we must conform. However painful it may be for me, if the Almighty should ever impose upon me the duties of wife and mother, I shall strive to fulfil them as faithfully as I can, without troubling to consider my feelings towards him whom he may give me for a husband.
I have received a letter from my brother, who announces that he is coming to Bald Hills with his wife. This will be a pleasure of brief duration, since he is leaving us to become part of this unhappy war in which we have become embroiled, God alone knows how and why. It is not only with you, at the centre of business and society, that all the talk is of war. Here too, with the countryman at his labour and nature at peace, which is how city-dwellers usually imagine the countryside, painful rumours of war are heard and felt. My father talks of nothing but marching and counter-marching, of which I have no understanding, and the day before yesterday, while out for my customary walk down the village street, I witnessed a heart-rending scene . . . It was a convoy of recruits who had been enrolled here and were being sent off to the army . . . You should have seen what a state they were in, the mothers, wives and children of the men who were going, and heard the sobbing on both sides! It seemed as if humanity had forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, who preached love and forgiveness, and were placing the greatest merit in the art of killing one another.
Goodbye for now, my dear, good friend. May our divine Saviour and his most Holy Mother keep you and guard you in their holiness and strength.
MARIE
'Oh, you are sending a letter, Princess. I've already sent mine. I've written to my poor mother,' said a smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne, sharply and brightly in her pleasant, ringing voice with its very throaty rs. She had swept into the stiflingly sad and gloomy atmosphere surrounding the princess bringing with her a quite different world of light-hearted and self-sustaining frivolity. 'Princess, I have to warn you,' she added, lowering her voice, 'the prince has had an altercation,' she said, with the r throatier than ever, and seeming to enjoy hearing herself speak. 'An altercation with Mikhail Ivanovich. He's in a bad mood, very grumpy. Be warned. Now you know . . .'
'Oh, my dear friend,' answered Princess Marya, 'I have asked you never to tell me in advance about my father's moods. I do not allow myself to pass judgement on him and would not wish others do so.'
The princess glanced at her watch, and saw that she was already five minutes late for clavichord practice. She went into the sitting-room with alarm written all over her face. From twelve to two, as laid down by the timetable for each day, the prince took his rest and the princess played the clavichord.
CHAPTER 23
The grey-haired valet was sitting in the ante-room dozing and listening to the prince snoring away in his immense study. From the far end of the house through all the closed doors came the sound of music, the hard passages of a Dussek sonata42 being repeated twenty times over.
Two carriages, one large, one small, drove up to the steps. Prince Andrey got out of one, helped his little wife down and let her go on ahead. Grey old Tikhon in his wig slipped out from the ante-room and whispered that the prince was taking his nap, and closed the door quickly after himself. Tikhon knew that no unusual events, not even the arrival of his son, must infringe the timetable for each day. Prince Andrey clearly knew this as well as Tikhon. He consulted his watch as if wondering whether his father's habits might have changed while he had been away, and when he was satisfied that they hadn't he turned to his wife.
'He'll be up in twenty minutes. Let's go and see Princess Marya,' he said.
The little princess had filled out recently, but her eyes and that short upper lip with its touch of down and its bright smile popped up as sweetly and cheerfully as ever when she spoke.
'But it's a palace!' she exclaimed to her husband, staring around and speaking like someone at a ball who wants to praise the host. 'Come on, let's hurry!' She still stared round, smiling at them all, Tikhon, her husband and the servant helping them in.
'Is that Marie practising? Let's go in quietly and surprise her.' Prince Andrey followed politely behind her, looking depressed.
'You've aged a bit, Tikhon,' he said as he walked by the old man, who was kissing his hand.
Just as they reached the room where the clavichord was being played a pretty blonde Frenchwoman skipped out through a side door. Mademoiselle Bourienne seemed beside herself with joy.
'Oh, what a treat for the princess!' she exclaimed. 'At last! I must tell her.'
'No, no, please don't . . .' said the little princess, kissing her. 'You must be Mademoiselle Bourienne. I know about you because you have been such a good friend to my sister-in-law. She's not expecting us!'
They went to the sitting-room door through which came the sounds of the same passage being repeated over and over again. Prince Andrey stopped with a frown, as if something unpleasant was about to happen.
Then the little princess went in. The playing stopped half-way through. He heard an exclamation followed by the heavy footsteps of Princess Marya and kissing noises. When Prince Andrey came in the two princesses, who had met only once before, briefly, at the wedding, were hugging each other and kissing hard wherever they happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne was standing near them, hand on heart, smiling blissfully and not knowing whether to laugh or to cry. Prince Andrey shrugged and scowled like a music-lover frowning at a false note. The two ladies let go, then immediately seized each other's hands as if every second counted, kissed them, tore them away, smothered each other's faces with more kisses and then amazed Prince Andrey by bursting into floods of tears, both of them, before carrying on with yet more kissing. Mademoiselle Bourienne cried too. Prince Andrey was clearly embarrassed, but to the two women crying seemed the most natural thing in the world; it would never have occurred to them that this meeting could have taken place without it.
'Oh, my dear! . . . My dear Marie! . . .' both ladies blurted out together, and then laughed. 'I had a dream last night . . . You really didn't expect us? . . . Oh, Marie, you've lost weight.' 'And you've put some on . . .'
'I recognized the princess straightaway,' put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.
'No, I had no idea! . . .' cried Princess Marya. 'Oh, Andrey, I didn't see you there.'
Prince Andrey and his sister kissed each other's hands, and he told her she was just the same crybaby she always had been. Princess Marya turned to her brother, and through all the tears her wide and radiant eyes, shining for an instant with a rare beauty, lingered with gentle, loving tenderness on Prince Andrey's face. The little princess chattered away. Her short, downy upper lip would flick down momentarily to meet the rosy, lower lip at just the right point, only to flit away in a smile, teeth gleaming and eyes sparkling. She was describing something that had happened to them on Spassky Hill that could have been serious for someone in her condition, and went on to say that she had left all her dresses behind in Petersburg and God knows what she would walk about in here, that Andrey had completely changed, that Kitty Odyntsov had married an old man, and that someone 'quite serious' had turned up as a suitor for Princess Marya, but that was something they could talk about later. Princess Marya was still gazing in silence at her brother, her lovely eyes filled with affection and sadness. She was clearly thinking thoughts of her own, miles away from the young bride's chatter. In the middle of her sister-in-law's description of the last holiday celebration in Petersburg she spoke to her brother.
'So, it's settled, then. You are going to the war, Andrey?' she asked with a sigh. Liza sighed with her.
'Yes, I'm going tomorrow,' answered her brother.
'He's deserting me. God knows why, when he could have been promoted . . .'
Princess Marya stopped listening, followed her own train of th
ought and then turned to Liza, directing sympathetic eyes to her figure.
'It's true, then?' she asked.
Liza's face changed, and she gave a sigh.
'Yes, it's true,' she said. 'Oh! I'm so scared . . .'
Liza's lip drooped. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's, and yet again she burst into tears.
'She needs to rest,' said Prince Andrey with a frown. 'Don't you, Liza? Take her to your room, while I go and see Father. How is he - same as always?'
'Yes, just the same. I don't know what you'll make of him,' Princess Marya answered with some delight.
'The same old timetable, walks in the avenues, that lathe?' asked Prince Andrey with a barely noticeable smile which showed that he loved and respected his father but knew about his eccentricities.
'The same timetable, the same lathe, still mathematics - and my geometry lessons,' Princess Marya answered cheerfully, as though geometry lessons were one of the most delightful prospects in her life.
When the old prince's twenty minutes for getting up had come and gone, Tikhon arrived to summon the young man to his father. The old man allowed one infringement of his normal routine in honour of his son's arrival, arranging for him to be admitted to his rooms while he was dressing for dinner. The old prince dressed in the old style - all kaftan and powder. And when Prince Andrey walked into his father's room, not with the moody face and attitude that he assumed for entering fashionable drawing-rooms, but with the eager look he had shown when talking to Pierre, the old man was sitting in a big leather armchair with his head abandoned to the ministrations of Tikhon.
'Aha! The warrior comes! So you want to fight Bonaparte?' said the old man, shaking his powdered head and pigtail as best he could, with Tikhon still working on it. 'And you get after him as soon as you like, or he'll have us down as his subjects sooner than you think. Hello, my boy!'
And he offered a cheek.
The old gentleman was in fine fettle after his nap before dinner. (Sleep after dinner is silver, sleep before dinner is gold, was his motto.) He aimed delighted sideways glances at his son from beneath his thick bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrey walked forward and kissed his father on the appointed spot. He avoided any comment on his father's hobby horse - joking about today's military men and especially Bonaparte.
'Yes, I have come to you, Father, with a wife who is pregnant,' said Prince Andrey, his lively, respectful eyes following every movement of his father's face. 'How are you keeping?'
'It's only fools and libertines that fall ill, my boy, and you know me - busy from dawn to dusk and I don't indulge. Of course I'm well.' 'Thank God for that,' said his son with a smile.
'God doesn't come into it. Come on then, start telling me,' the old man continued, back on his favourite topic, 'what have the Germans taught you about fighting Bonaparte with this new scientific stuff - strategy, or whatever they call it?'
Prince Andrey smiled.
'Give me a minute to recover, Father,' he said, with a smile which showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his respecting and loving him. 'I haven't even been to my room yet.'
'Nonsense, my boy,' cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to make sure it was properly plaited, and taking his son by the hand. 'The house is ready for your wife. Marie will take her around and show her everything, and they'll talk the hind leg off a donkey. That's the way with women. I'm pleased she's come. So, sit down and talk to me. I know about Mikhelson's army, and Tolstoy's43 . . . simultaneous attacks . . . But what's the Southern Army going to be doing? Then there's Prussia, she's neutral . . . I know about that. What about Austria?' he asked, getting up from his chair and pacing up and down the room, with Tikhon trotting at his heels, handing him various articles of clothing. 'And Sweden? And how will they get through Pomerania?'
After listening to question after question put so insistently by his father, Prince Andrey started to outline the plan of operations of the proposed campaign. Reluctant at first, he soon became more and more enthusiastic, and as he spoke he followed his usual habit of alternating between Russian and French. He told him an army of ninety thousand was to threaten Prussia in order to bring her out of neutrality and into the war, some of these men were to join with the Swedes at Stralsund, two hundred and twenty thousand Austrians would combine with a hundred thousand Russians in Italy and on the Rhine, fifty thousand Russians and fifty thousand English were to land at Naples, and the entire half-a-million-strong army would then attack the French on several different fronts. The old prince showed no sign of interest in what he was saying - he seemed not to be listening - and he carried on getting dressed as he walked up and down, but he did make three sudden interruptions.
Once he stopped and shouted, 'The white one! The white one!', meaning that Tikhon had handed him the wrong waistcoat.
Another time he stopped and asked, 'When is she due?', shaking his head reproachfully: 'Hmm . . . Too bad! Well, get on with it.'
The third time was when Prince Andrey was coming towards the end of his story. Suddenly the old man's wobbly falsetto sang out the French song, 'Marlborough is off to war, God knows when we'll see him . . .'44 His son merely smiled.
'I don't say it's a plan I approve of,' he said. 'I'm just telling you how things are. Napoleon has his own plan and it's no worse than ours.'
'Well, you've told me nothing new.'
Pensively the old man gabbled to himself, ' "God knows when we'll see him . . ." Go on into dinner.'
CHAPTER 24
Exactly on time, the prince, well powdered and clean-shaven, strode into the dining-room, to be welcomed by his daughter-in-law, Princess Marya, Mademoiselle Bourienne and the prince's architect, who was allowed to dine with them by some strange whim of the master, even though such an unimportant person of no significant status was hardly entitled to such an honour. Normally a stickler for social distinctions, the prince was loath to admit to his table even important local dignitaries, but he had suddenly lighted on the architect Mikhail Ivanovich, who had a habit of going into a corner to blow his nose into a checked handkerchief, as living proof that all men are equal, and had repeatedly impressed on his daughter that Mikhail Ivanovich was by no means an inferior. At meals the prince spent most of his time talking to the architect, who never said anything back.
Like all the other rooms in the house, the dining-room was vast, with a high ceiling. With the prince about to enter, servants and waiters stood there expectantly, one behind each chair. The butler, with a napkin draped over his arm, was checking the table and giving eye-signals to the servants, all the time glancing uneasily from the wall-clock to the doorway through which the prince would soon enter. Prince Andrey was staring at something new - an immense gilt frame containing the Bolkonsky family tree and across from it another frame, just as big, with a badly painted image of a crowned Prince Regent (obviously done by some amateur domestic), supposedly a descendant of Rurik45 and founder of the Bolkonsky dynasty. Prince Andrey shook his head as he looked at this family tree and laughed as you would at an unintended caricature.
'That's him to a T!' he said to Princess Marya as she came up to him.
Princess Marya looked at her brother in surprise, not seeing anything funny about it. Everything her father did was beyond criticism and inspired reverence.
'Everyone has an Achilles' heel,' Prince Andrey went on. 'All his vast intellect, and he sinks to this level of crassness!'
Princess Marya couldn't understand her brother's biting criticism and was just about to protest when the footsteps they were all listening for were heard coming from the study. In strode the prince with a brisk joviality. This was how he always walked, as if consciously contradicting the strict household regime with a bustling manner of his own. On the instant the big clock struck two and another clock in the drawing-room echoed with a thinner chime. The prince stopped and peered out sternly from under his great bushy eyebrows, his sharp eyes glinting as they first surveyed all the diners and then lighted on the little princess. Sh
e felt like a courtier at the entrance of the Tsar, such was the feeling of intimidation and profound respect that this old man evoked in everyone about him. He stroked her hair, and then rather awkwardly gave her a pat on the neck.
'Yes, I'm very pleased,' he said, and after staring into her eyes he walked off and sat down in his place. 'Do sit down, everyone. Mikhail Ivanovich, do sit down.'