War and Peace (126 page)

In the Apocalypse, chapter thirteen, verse seventeen, it is written: “Here is wisdom; let him that hath understanding, count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred three-score and six.”

And in the fifth verse of the same chapter: “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.”

If the French alphabet is treated like the Hebrew system of enumeration, by which the first ten letters represent the units, and the next the tens, and so on, the letters have the following value:—

Turning out the words
l’empereur Napoléon
into ciphers on this system, it happens that the sum of these numbers equals 666, and Napoleon is thereby seen to be the beast prophesied in the Apocalypse. Moreover, working out in the same way the words
quarante-deux
, that is, the term for which the beast was permitted to continue, the sum of these numbers again equals 666, from which it is deduced that the terms of Napoleon’s power had come in 1812, when the French Emperor reached his forty-second year. This prophecy made a great impression on Pierre. He frequently asked himself what would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon; and he tried by the same system of turning letters into figures, and reckoning them up to find an answer to this question. He wrote down as an answer,
l’empereur Alexandre? La nation russe?
He reckoned out the figures, but their sum was far more or less than 666. Once he wrote down his own name “Comte Pierre Bezuhov,” but the
sum of the figure was far from being right. He changed the spelling, putting s for z, added “de,” added the article “le,” and still could not obtain the desired result. Then it occurred to him that if the answer sought for were to be found in his name, his nationality ought surely to find a place in it too. He tried
Le russe Besuhof
, and adding up the figure made the sum 671. This was only five too much; the 5 was denoted by the letter “e,” the letter dropped in the article in the expression
l’empereur Napoléon
. Dropping the “e” in a similar way, though of course incorrectly, Pierre obtained the answer he sought in
L’russe Besuhof
, the letters of which on that system added up to 666. This discovery greatly excited him. How, by what connection, he was associated with the great event, foretold in the Apocalypse, he could not tell. But he did not for a moment doubt of that connection. His love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon’s invasion, the comet, the number 666,
l’empereur Napoléon
, and
l’russe Besuhof
—all he thought were to develop, and come to some crisis together to extricate him from that spellbound, trivial round of Moscow habits, to which he felt himself in bondage, and to lead him to some great achievement and great happiness.

The day before that Sunday on which the new prayer had been read in the churches, Pierre had promised the Rostovs to call on Count Rastoptchin, whom he knew well, and to get from him the Tsar’s appeal to the country, and the last news from the army. On going to Count Rastoptchin’s in the morning, Pierre found there a special courier, who had only just arrived from the army. The courier was a man whom Pierre knew, and often saw at the Moscow balls.

“For mercy’s sake, couldn’t you relieve me of some of my burden,” said the courier; “I have a sack full of letters to parents.”

Among these letters was a letter from Nikolay Rostov to his father. Pierre took that; and Count Rastoptchin gave him a copy of the Tsar’s appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last announcements in the army, and his own last placard. Looking through the army announcements, Pierre found in one of them, among lists of wounded, killed and promoted, the name of Nikolay Rostov, rewarded with the order of St. George, of the fourth degree, for distinguished bravery in the Ostrovna affair, and in the same announcement the appointment of Prince Andrey Bolkonsky to the command of a regiment of light cavalry. Though he did not want to remind the Rostovs of Bolkonsky’s existence, Pierre could not resist the inclination to rejoice their hearts with the news of their son’s decoration. Keeping the Tsar’s appeal, Rastoptchin’s placard,
and the other announcement to bring with him at dinner-time, Pierre sent the printed announcement and Nikolay’s letter to the Rostovs.

The conversation with Rastoptchin, and his tone of anxiety and hurry, the meeting with the courier, who had casually alluded to the disastrous state of affairs in the army, the rumours of spies being caught in Moscow, of a sheet circulating in the town stating that Napoleon had sworn to be in both capitals before autumn, of the Tsar’s expected arrival next day—all combined to revive in Pierre with fresh intensity that feeling of excitement and expectation, that he had been conscious of ever since the appearance of the comet, and with even greater force since the beginning of the war.

The idea of entering the army had long before occurred to Pierre, and he would have acted upon it, but that, in the first place, he was pledged by his vow to the Masonic brotherhood, which preached universal peace and the abolition of war; and secondly, when he looked at the great mass of Moscow gentlemen, who put on uniforms, and professed themselves patriots, he felt somehow ashamed to take the same step. A cause that weighed with him even more in not entering the army was the obscure conception that he,
l’russe Besuhof
, had somehow the mystic value of the number of the beast, 666, that his share in putting a limit to the power of the beast, “speaking great things and blasphemies,” had been ordained from all eternity, and that therefore it was not for him to take any step whatever; it was for him to wait for what was bound to come to pass.

A few intimate friends were, as usual on Sundays, dining with the Rostovs.

Pierre came early, hoping to find them alone.

Pierre had that year grown so stout, that he would have been grotesque, had not he been so tall, so broad-shouldered, and so powerfully built that he carried off his bulky proportions with evident ease.

Puffing, and muttering something to himself, he went up the stairs. His coachman did not even ask whether he should wait. He knew that when the count was at the Rostovs’, it was till midnight. The Rostovs’ footmen ran with eager welcome to take off his cloak, and take his stick and hat. From the habit of the club, Pierre always left his stick and hat in the vestibule.

The first person he saw at the Rostovs’ was Natasha. Before he saw her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practising her sol-fa exercises in the hall. He knew she had given up singing since her illness, and so he was surprised and delighted at the sound of her voice. He opened the door softly, and saw Natasha, in the lilac dress she had worn at the service, walking up and down the room singing. She had her back turned to him as he opened the door; but when she turned sharply round and saw his broad, surprised face, she flushed and ran quickly up to him.

“I want to try and sing again,” she said. “It’s something to do, any way,” she added as though in excuse.

“Quite right too!”

“How glad I am you have come! I’m so happy to-day,” she said with the old eagerness that Pierre had not seen for so long. “You know, Nikolenka has got the St. George’s Cross. I’m so proud of him.”

“Of course, I sent you the announcement. Well, I won’t interrupt you,” he added, and would have gone on to the drawing-room.

Natasha stopped him.

“Count, is it wrong of me to sing?” she said, blushing, but still keeping her eyes fixed inquiringly on Pierre.

“No.… Why should it be? On the contrary.… But why do you ask me?”

“I don’t know myself,” Natasha answered quickly; “but I shouldn’t like to do anything you wouldn’t like. I trust you in everything. You don’t know how much you are to me, and what a great deal you have done for me!” … She spoke quickly, and did not notice how Pierre flushed at these words. “I saw in that announcement,
he
, Bolkonsky” (she uttered the word in a rapid whisper), “he is in Russia, and in the army again. What do you think,” she said hurriedly, evidently in haste to speak because she was afraid her strength would fail her, “will he ever forgive me? Will he not always have an evil feeling for me? What do you think? What do you think?”

“I think …” said Pierre. “He has nothing to forgive … If I were in his place …” From association of ideas, Pierre was instantly carried back in imagination to the time when he had comforted her by saying that if he were not himself, but the best man in the world and free, he would beg on his knees for her hand, and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love took possession of him, and the same words rose to his lips. But she did not give him time to utter them.

“Yes, you—you,” she said, uttering that word
you
with enthusiasm,
“that’s a different matter. Any one kinder, more generous than you, I have never known—no one could be. If it had not been for you then, and now too … I don’t know what would have become of me, because …” Tears suddenly came into her eyes: she turned away, held her music before her eyes, and began again singing and walking up and down the room.

At that moment Petya ran in from the drawing-room.

Petya was by now a handsome, rosy lad of fifteen, with full red lips, very like Natasha. He was being prepared for the university, but had lately resolved in secret with his comrade, Obolensky, to go into the hussars.

Petya rushed up to his namesake, Pierre, to talk to him of this scheme.

He had begged him to find out whether he would be accepted in the hussars.

Pierre walked about the drawing-room, not heeding Petya.

The boy pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.

“Come, tell me about my plan, Pyotr Kirillitch, for mercy’s sake! You’re my only hope,” said Petya.

“Oh yes, your plan. To be an hussar? I’ll speak about it; to-day I’ll tell them all about it.”

“Well, my dear fellow, have you got the manifesto?” asked the old count. “My little countess was at the service in the Razumovskys’ chapel; she heard the new prayer there. Very fine it was, she tells me.”

“Yes, I have got it,” answered Pierre. “The Tsar will be here tomorrow.… There’s to be an extraordinary meeting of the nobility and a levy they say of ten per thousand. Oh, I congratulate you.”

“Yes, yes, thank God. Well, and what news from the army?”

“Our soldiers have retreated again. They are before Smolensk, they say,” answered Pierre.

“Mercy on us, mercy on us!” said the count. “Where’s the manifesto?”

“The Tsar’s appeal? Ah, yes!” Pierre began looking for the papers in his pockets, and could not find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the countess’s hand as she came in, and looked round uneasily, evidently expecting Natasha, who had left off singing now, but had not come into the drawing-room. “Good Heavens, I don’t know where I have put it,” he said.

“To be sure, he always mislays everything,” said the countess.

Natasha came in with a softened and agitated face and sat down, looking mutely at Pierre. As soon as she came into the room, Pierre’s face, which had been overcast, brightened, and while still seeking for the paper, he looked several times intently at her.

“By God, I’ll drive round, I must have forgotten them at home. Of course …”

“Why, you will be late for dinner.”

“Oh! and the coachman has not waited.”

But Sonya had gone into the vestibule to look for the papers, and there found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had carefully put them under the lining. Pierre would have read them.

“No, after dinner,” said the old count, who was obviously looking forward to the reading of them as a great treat.

At dinner they drank champagne to the health of the new cavalier of St. George, and Shinshin told them of the news of the town, of the illness of the old Georgian princess, and of the disappearance of Metivier from Moscow, and described how a German had been brought before Rastoptchin by the people, who declared (so Count Rastoptchin told the story) that he was a
champignon
, and how Count Rastoptchin had bade them let the
champignon
go, as he was really nothing but an old German mushroom.

“They keep on seizing people,” said the count. “I tell the countess she ought not to speak French so much. Now’s not the time to do it.”

“And did you hear,” said Shinshin, “Prince Galitzin has engaged a Russian teacher—he’s learning Russian. It begins to be dangerous to speak French in the streets.”

“Well, Count Pyotr Kirillitch, now if they raise a general militia, you will have to mount a horse too, ah?” said the old count addressing Pierre.

Pierre was dreamy and silent all dinner-time. He looked at the count as though not understanding.

“Yes, yes, for the war,” he said. “No! A fine soldier I should make! And yet everything’s so strange; so strange! Why, I don’t understand it myself. I don’t know, I am far from being military in my taste, but in these days no one can answer for himself.”

After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in a low chair, and with a serious face asked Sonya, who enjoyed the reputation of a good reader, to read the Tsar’s appeal.