War and Peace
At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house Speránski
owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room of this small
house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting that of a
monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the friendly
gathering of Speránski’s intimate acquaintances already assembled
at five o’clock. There were no ladies present except Speránski’s
little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her governess. The
other guests were Gervais, Magnítski, and Stolýpin. While still in
the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a ringing staccato
laugh—a laugh such as one hears on the stage. Someone—it sounded
like Speránski—was distinctly ejaculating ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew
had never before heard Speránski’s famous laugh, and this ringing,
high-pitched laughter from a statesman made a strange impression on him.
He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing between two
windows at a small table laid with hors-d’oeuvres. Speránski, wearing
a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast, and evidently still
the same waistcoat and high white stock he had worn at the meeting of
the Council of State, stood at the table with a beaming countenance. His
guests surrounded him. Magnítski, addressing himself to Speránski,
was relating an anecdote, and Speránski was laughing in advance at
what Magnítski was going to say. When Prince Andrew entered the room
Magnítski’s words were again crowned by laughter. Stolýpin gave
a deep bass guffaw as he munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais
laughed softly with a hissing chuckle, and Speránski in a high-pitched
staccato manner.
Still laughing, Speránski held out his soft white hand to Prince
Andrew.
“Very pleased to see you, Prince,” he said. “One moment...” he
went on, turning to Magnítski and interrupting his story. “We have
agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about
business!” and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.
Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speránski with astonishment,
regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not
Speránski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared
mysterious and fascinating in Speránski suddenly became plain and
unattractive.
At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed to
consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before Magnítski
had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate something
still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the state
service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in this
company the insignificance of those people was so definitely accepted
that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good humored
ridicule. Speránski related how at the Council that morning a deaf
dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so too.
Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable for the
stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolýpin, stuttering, broke into
the conversation and began excitedly talking of the abuses that existed
under the former order of things—threatening to give a serious turn
to the conversation. Magnítski starting quizzing Stolýpin about his
vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and the talk reverted to its
former lively tone.
Evidently Speránski liked to rest after his labors and find amusement
in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his wish, tried
to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety seemed to Prince
Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speránski’s high-pitched voice struck
him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter grated on him like a false
note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and feared that he would be a damper
on the spirits of the company, but no one took any notice of his being
out of harmony with the general mood. They all seemed very gay.
He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his remarks were
tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the water, and he could
not jest with them.
There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was witty and
might have been funny, but it lacked just that something which is the
salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a thing existed.
After dinner Speránski’s daughter and her governess rose. He patted
the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that gesture,
too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.
The men remained at table over their port—English fashion. In the
midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon’s Spanish
affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to
express a contrary opinion. Speránski smiled and, with an evident wish
to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a
story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few
moments all were silent.
Having sat some time at table, Speránski corked a bottle of wine and,
remarking, “Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,” passed
it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk loudly
went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier were handed
to Speránski and he took them to his study. As soon as he had left
the room the general merriment stopped and the guests began to converse
sensibly and quietly with one another.
“Now for the recitation!” said Speránski on returning from
his study. “A wonderful talent!” he said to Prince Andrew, and
Magnítski immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous
verses in French which he had composed about various well-known
Petersburg people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When
the verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speránski and took
his leave.
“Where are you off to so early?” asked Speránski.
“I promised to go to a reception.”
They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those mirrorlike,
impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of him to have
expected anything from Speránski and from any of his own activities
connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance to what
Speránski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang in Prince
Andrew’s ears long after he had left the house.
When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in
Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something new. He
recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of his project
of army reform, which had been accepted for consideration and which they
were trying to pass over in silence simply because another, a very poor
one, had already been prepared and submitted to the Emperor. He thought
of the meetings of a committee of which Berg was a member. He remembered
how carefully and at what length everything relating to form and
procedure was discussed at those meetings, and how sedulously and
promptly all that related to the gist of the business was evaded. He
recalled his labors on the Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had
translated the articles of the Roman and French codes into Russian,
and he felt ashamed of himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself
Boguchárovo, his occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazán;
he remembered the peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally
applying to them the Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he
felt astonished that he could have spent so much time on such useless
work.
CHAPTER XIX
Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited before,
and among them at the Rostóvs’ with whom he had renewed acquaintance
at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness which demanded the
call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl who had left such a
pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.
Natásha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a dark-blue
house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier than in
her ball dress. She and all the Rostóv family welcomed him as an old
friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he had formerly
judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of excellent, simple,
and kindly people. The old count’s hospitality and good nature, which
struck one especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such
that Prince Andrew could not refuse to stay to dinner. “Yes,”
he thought, “they are capital people, who of course have not the
slightest idea what a treasure they possess in Natásha; but they are
kindly folk and form the best possible setting for this strikingly
poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!”
In Natásha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely
alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,
that in the Otrádnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night
had already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no
longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered it
found in it a new enjoyment.
After dinner Natásha, at Prince Andrew’s request, went to the
clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window talking
to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he ceased
speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had thought
impossible for him. He looked at Natásha as she sang, and something new
and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the same time sad.
He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was ready to weep. What
about? His former love? The little princess? His disillusionments?...
His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The chief reason was a sudden,
vivid sense of the terrible contrast between something infinitely great
and illimitable within him and that limited and material something that
he, and even she, was. This contrast weighed on and yet cheered him
while she sang.
As soon as Natásha had finished she went up to him and asked how he
liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling that
she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and said he
liked her singing as he liked everything she did.
Prince Andrew left the Rostóvs’ late in the evening. He went to bed
from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having lit his
candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again not at all
troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and joyful as if he
had stepped out of a stuffy room into God’s own fresh air. It did not
enter his head that he was in love with Natásha; he was not thinking
about her, but only picturing her to himself, and in consequence all
life appeared in a new light. “Why do I strive, why do I toil in this
narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with all its joys, is open
to me?” said he to himself. And for the first time for a very long
while he began making happy plans for the future. He decided that he
must attend to his son’s education by finding a tutor and putting
the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire from the service and go
abroad, and see England, Switzerland and Italy. “I must use my freedom
while I feel so much strength and youth in me,” he said to himself.
“Pierre was right when he said one must believe in the possibility of
happiness in order to be happy, and now I do believe in it. Let the dead
bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy!”
thought he.
CHAPTER XX
One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in
Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an immaculate
brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed forward over his
temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.
“I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately she
could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more fortunate