War and Peace (4 page)

“Isn’t it too bad of you to rob us of your charming wife?”

“
André
,” said his wife, addressing her husband in exactly the same coquettish tone in which she spoke to outsiders, “the vicomte has just told us such a story about Mlle. Georges and Bonaparte!”

Prince Andrey scowled and turned away. Pierre, who had kept his eyes joyfully and affectionately fixed on him ever since he came in, went up to him and took hold of his arm. Prince Andrey, without looking round, twisted his face into a grimace of annoyance at any one’s touching him, but seeing Pierre’s smiling face, he gave him a smile that was unexpectedly sweet and pleasant.

“Why, you!… And in such society too,” he said to Pierre.

“I knew you would be here,” answered Pierre. “I’m coming to supper with you,” he added in an undertone, not to interrupt the vicomte who was still talking. “Can I?”

“Oh no, impossible,” said Prince Andrey, laughing, with a squeeze of his hand giving Pierre to understand that there was no need to ask. He would have said something more, but at that instant Prince Vassily and his daughter got up and the two young men rose to make way for them.

“Pardon me, my dear vicomte,” said Prince Vassily in French, gently pulling him down by his sleeve to prevent him from getting up from his seat. “This luckless fête at the ambassador’s deprives me of a pleasure and interrupts you. I am very sorry to leave your enchanting party,” he said to Anna Pavlovna.

His daughter, Princess Ellen, lightly holding the folds of her gown, passed between the chairs, and the smile glowed more brightly than ever on her handsome face. Pierre looked with rapturous, almost frightened eyes at this beautiful creature as she passed them.

“Very lovely!” said Prince Andrey.

“Very,” said Pierre.

As he came up to them, Prince Vassily took Pierre by the arm, and addressing Anna Pavlovna:

“Get this bear into shape for me,” he said. “Here he has been staying with me for a month, and this is the first time I have seen him in society. Nothing’s so necessary for a young man as the society of clever women.”

Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to look after Pierre, who was, she knew, related to Prince Vassily on his father’s side. The elderly lady, who had been till then sitting by the aunt, got up hurriedly, and overtook Prince Vassily in the hall. All the affectation of interest she had assumed till now vanished. Her kindly, careworn face expressed nothing but anxiety and alarm.

“What have you to tell me, prince, of my Boris?” she said, catching him in the hall. “I can’t stay any longer in Petersburg. Tell me what news am I to take to my poor boy?”

Although Prince Vassily listened reluctantly and almost uncivilly to the elderly lady and even showed signs of impatience, she gave him an ingratiating and appealing smile, and to prevent his going away she took him by the arm. “It is nothing for you to say a word to the Emperor, and he will be transferred at once to the Guards,” she implored.

“Believe me, I will do all I can, princess,” answered Prince Vassily; “but it’s not easy for me to petition the Emperor. I should advise you to apply to Rumyantsov, through Prince Galitsin; that would be the wisest course.”

The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskoy, one of the best families in Russia; but she was poor, had been a long while out of society, and had lost touch with her former connections. She had come now to try and obtain the appointment of her only son to the Guards. It was simply in order to see Prince Vassily that she had invited herself and come to Anna Pavlovna’s party, simply for that she had listened to the vicomte’s story. She was dismayed at Prince Vassily’s words; her once handsome face showed exasperation, but that lasted only one moment. She smiled again and grasped Prince Vassily’s arm more tightly.

“Hear what I have to say, prince,” she said. “I have never asked you a favour, and never will I ask one; I have never reminded you of my father’s affection for you. But now, for God’s sake, I beseech you, do this for my son, and I shall consider you my greatest benefactor,” she added hurriedly. “No, don’t be angry, but promise me. I have asked Galitsin; he has refused. Be as kind as you used to be,” she said, trying to smile, though there were tears in her eyes.

“Papa, we are late,” said Princess Ellen, turning her lovely head on her statuesque shoulders as she waited at the door.

But influence in the world is a capital, which must be carefully
guarded if it is not to disappear. Prince Vassily knew this, and having once for all reflected that if he were to beg for all who begged him to do so, he would soon be unable to beg for himself, he rarely made use of his influence. In Princess Drubetskoy’s case, however, he felt after her new appeal something akin to a conscience-prick. She had reminded him of the truth; for his first step upwards in the service he had been indebted to her father. Besides this, he saw from her manner that she was one of those women—especially mothers—who having once taken an idea into their heads will not give it up till their wishes are fulfilled, and till then are prepared for daily, hourly persistence, and even for scenes. This last consideration made him waver.

“
Chère
Anna Mihalovna,” he said, with his invariable familiarity and boredom in his voice, “it’s almost impossible for me to do what you wish; but to show you my devotion to you, and my reverence for your dear father’s memory, I will do the impossible—your son shall be transferred to the Guards; here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?”

“My dear prince, you are our benefactor. I expected nothing less indeed; I know how good you are—–” He tried to get away. “Wait a moment, one word. Once in the Guards …” She hesitated. “You are on friendly terms with Mihail Ilarionovitch Kutuzov, recommend Boris as his adjutant. Then my heart will be set at rest, then indeed …”

Prince Vassily smiled. “That I can’t promise. You don’t know how Kutuzov has been besieged ever since he has been appointed commander-in-chief. He told me himself that all the Moscow ladies were in league together to give him all their offspring as adjutants.”

“No, promise me; I can’t let you off, kind, good friend, benefactor …”

“Papa,” repeated the beauty in the same tone, “we are late.”

“Come,
au revoir
, good-bye. You see how it is.”

“To-morrow then you will speak to the Emperor?”

“Certainly; but about Kutuzov I can’t promise.”

“Yes; do promise, promise,
Basile
,” Anna Mihalovna said, pursuing him with the smile of a coquettish girl, once perhaps characteristic, but now utterly incongruous with her careworn face. Evidently she had forgotten her age and from habit was bringing out every feminine resource. But as soon as he had gone out her face assumed once more the frigid, artificial expression it had worn all the evening. She went back to the group in which the vicomte was still talking, and again affected to be listening, waiting for the suitable moment to get away, now that her object had been attained.

“And what do you think of this latest farce of the coronation at Milan?” said Anna Pavlovna. “And the new comedy of the people of Lucca and Genoa coming to present their petitions to Monsieur Buonaparte. Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions of nations! Adorable! Why, it is enough to drive one out of one’s senses! It seems as though the whole world had lost its head.”

Prince Andrey smiled sarcastically, looking straight into Anna Pavlovna’s face.

“God gives it me; let man beware of touching it,” he said (Bonaparte’s words uttered at the coronation). “They say that he was very fine as he spoke those words,” he added, and he repeated the same words in Italian: “
Dio me l’ha data, e quai a chi la tocca
.”

“I hope that at last,” pursued Anna Pavlovna, “this has been the drop of water that will make the glass run over. The sovereigns cannot continue to endure this man who is a threat to everything.”

“The sovereigns! I am not speaking of Russia,” said the vicomte deferentially and hopelessly. “The sovereigns!… Madame! What did they do for Louis the Sixteenth, for the queen, for Madame Elisabeth? Nothing,” he went on with more animation; “and believe me, they are undergoing the punishment of their treason to the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns!… They are sending ambassadors to congratulate the usurper.”

And with a scornful sigh he shifted his attitude again. Prince Ippolit, who had for a long time been staring through his eyeglass at the vicomte, at these words suddenly turned completely round, and bending over the little princess asked her for a needle, and began showing her the coat-of-arms of the Condé family, scratching it with the needle on the table. He explained the coat-of-arms with an air of gravity, as though the princess had asked him about it. “Staff, gules; engrailed with gules of azure—house of Condé,” he said. The princess listened smiling.

“If Bonaparte remains another year on the throne of France,” resumed the vicomte, with the air of a man who, being better acquainted with the subject than any one else, pursues his own train of thought without listening to other people, “things will have gone too far. By intrigue and violence, by exiles and executions, French society—I mean good society—will have been destroyed for ever, and then …”

He shrugged his shoulders, and made a despairing gesture with his hand. Pierre wanted to say something—the conversation interested him—but Anna Pavlovna, who was keeping her eye on him, interposed.

“And the Emperor Alexander,” she said with the pathetic note that always accompanied all her references to the imperial family, “has declared his intention of leaving it to the French themselves to choose their own form of government. And I imagine there is no doubt that the whole nation, delivered from the usurper, would fling itself into the arms of its lawful king,” said Anna Pavlovna, trying to be agreeable to an
émigré
and loyalist.

“That’s not certain,” said Prince Andrey. “
M. le vicomte
is quite right in supposing that things have gone too far by now. I imagine it would not be easy to return to the old régime.”

“As far as I could hear,” Pierre, blushing, again interposed in the conversation, “almost all the nobility have gone over to Bonaparte.”

“That’s what the Bonapartists assert,” said the vicomte without looking at Pierre. “It’s a difficult matter now to find out what public opinion is in France.”

“Bonaparte said so,” observed Prince Andrey with a sarcastic smile. It was evident that he did not like the vicomte, and that though he was not looking at him, he was directing his remarks against him.

“ ‘I showed them the path of glory; they would not take it,’ ” he said after a brief pause, again quoting Napoleon’s words. “ ‘I opened my anterooms to them; they crowded in.’ … I do not know in what degree he had a right to say so.”

“None!” retorted the vicomte. “Since the duc’s murder even his warmest partisans have ceased to regard him as a hero. If indeed some people made a hero of him,” said the vicomte addressing Anna Pavlovna, “since the duke’s assassination there has been a martyr more in heaven, and a hero less on earth.”

Anna Pavlovna and the rest of the company hardly had time to smile their appreciation of the vicomte’s words, when Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna had a foreboding he would say something inappropriate, this time she was unable to stop him.

“The execution of the duc d’Enghien,” said Monsieur Pierre, “was a political necessity, and I consider it a proof of greatness of soul that Napoleon did not hesitate to take the whole responsibility of it upon himself.”

“
Dieu! mon Dieu!
” moaned Anna Pavlovna, in a terrified whisper.

“What, Monsieur Pierre! you think assassination is greatness of soul?” said the little princess, smiling and moving her work nearer to her.

“Ah! oh!” cried different voices.

“Capital!” Prince Ippolit said in English, and he began slapping his knee. The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders.

Pierre looked solemnly over his spectacles at his audience.

“I say so,” he pursued desperately, “because the Bourbons ran away from the Revolution, leaving the people to anarchy; and Napoleon alone was capable of understanding the Revolution, of overcoming it, and so for the public good he could not stop short at the life of one man.”

“Won’t you come over to this table?” said Anna Pavlovna. But Pierre went on without answering her.

“Yes,” he said, getting more and more eager, “Napoleon is great because he has towered above the Revolution, and subdued its evil tendencies, preserving all that was good—the equality of all citizens, and freedom of speech and of the press, and only to that end has he possessed himself of supreme power.”

“Yes, if on obtaining power he had surrendered it to the lawful king, instead of making use of it to commit murder,” said the vicomte, “then I might have called him a great man.”

“He could not have done that. The people gave him power simply for him to rid them of the Bourbons, and that was just why the people believed him to be a great man. The Revolution was a grand fact,” pursued Monsieur Pierre, betraying by this desperate and irrelevantly provocative statement his extreme youth and desire to give full expression to everything.

“Revolution and regicide a grand fact?… What next?… but won’t you come to this table?” repeated Anna Pavlovna.

“
Contrat social
,” said the vicomte with a bland smile.

“I’m not speaking of regicide. I’m speaking of the idea.”

“The idea of plunder, murder, and regicide!” an ironical voice put in.

“Those were extremes, of course; but the whole meaning of the Revolution did not lie in them, but in the rights of man, in emancipation from conventional ideas, in equality; and all these Napoleon has maintained in their full force.”

“Liberty and equality,” said the vicomte contemptuously, as though he had at last made up his mind to show this youth seriously all the folly of his assertions: “all high-sounding words, which have long since been debased. Who does not love liberty and equality? Our Saviour indeed preached liberty and equality. Have men been any happier since the
Revolution? On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Bonaparte has crushed it.”