War and Peace
with you,” he said with a smile.
“What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service.”
“I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count” (Berg said
this with perfect conviction that this information could not but be
agreeable), “and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own
and my wife’s friends.” (He smiled still more pleasantly.) “I
wished to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea
and to supper.”
Only Countess Hélène, considering the society of such people as the
Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an invitation.
Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at his house a small
but select company, and why this would give him pleasure, and why though
he grudged spending money on cards or anything harmful, he was prepared
to run into some expense for the sake of good society—that Pierre
could not refuse, and promised to come.
“But don’t be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten
minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is
coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you will
do me the favor.”
Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at the
Bergs’ house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.
Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were ready
for their guests’ arrival.
In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and pictures
and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely buttoned up in
his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to her that one always
could and should be acquainted with people above one, because only then
does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.
“You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I
managed from my first promotion.” (Berg measured his life not by years
but by promotions.) “My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only
waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to
be your husband.” (He rose and kissed Véra’s hand, and on the way
to her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) “And
how have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my
aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious and
methodical.”
Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and
paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak
woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man’s dignity,
what it was ein Mann zu sein. * Véra at the same time smiling with a
sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the
same understood life wrongly, as according to Véra all men did. Berg,
judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Véra, judging
only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed
that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and
selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.
* To be a man.
Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her lace
fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on the
lips.
“The only thing is, we mustn’t have children too soon,” he
continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.
“Yes,” answered Véra, “I don’t at all want that. We must live
for society.”
“Princess Yusúpova wore one exactly like this,” said Berg, pointing
to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.
Just then Count Bezúkhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced at one
another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally claiming
the honor of this visit.
“This is what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,” thought
Berg. “This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself.”
“But please don’t interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,”
said Véra, “because I know what interests each of them and what to
say to different people.”
Berg smiled again.
“It can’t be helped: men must sometimes have masculine
conversation,” said he.
They received Pierre in their small, new drawing room, where it was
impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,
neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange that
Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an armchair
or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently painfully
undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor to settle
the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry by moving a
chair for himself, and Berg and Véra immediately began their evening
party, interrupting each other in their efforts to entertain their
guest.
Véra, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be
entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once began
accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation was
required, interrupted his wife’s remarks and touched on the question
of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the general
subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made him to take
part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had declined them.
Though the conversation was very incoherent and Véra was angry at the
intrusion of the masculine element, both husband and wife felt with
satisfaction that, even if only one guest was present, their evening had
begun very well and was as like as two peas to every other evening party
with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.
Before long Borís, Berg’s old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of
condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Véra. After
Borís came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the
Rostóvs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other
evening parties. Berg and Véra could not repress their smiles of
satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing room,
at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of dresses, and the
bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody always has it,
especially so the general, who admired the apartment, patted Berg on the
shoulder, and with parental authority superintended the setting out of
the table for boston. The general sat down by Count Ilyá Rostóv, who
was next to himself the most important guest. The old people sat with
the old, the young with the young, and the hostess at the tea table, on
which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a silver cake basket as
the Panins had at their party. Everything was just as it was everywhere
else.
CHAPTER XXI
Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston
with Count Rostóv, the general, and the colonel. At the card table he
happened to be directly facing Natásha, and was struck by a curious
change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and not
only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from plainness by
her look of gentle indifference to everything around.
“What’s the matter with her?” thought Pierre, glancing at her.
She was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without
looking at him, made some reply to Borís who sat down beside her. After
playing out a whole suit and to his partner’s delight taking five
tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who had
entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again at
Natásha.
“What has happened to her?” he asked himself with still greater
surprise.
Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her with a
look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was looking up
at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid breathing. And
the bright glow of some inner fire that had been suppressed was again
alight in her. She was completely transformed and from a plain girl had
again become what she had been at the ball.
Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and
youthful expression in his friend’s face.
Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now with
his back to Natásha and now facing her, but during the whole of the six
rubbers he watched her and his friend.
“Something very important is happening between them,” thought
Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him and
made him neglect the game.
After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use playing
like that, and Pierre was released. Natásha on one side was talking
with Sónya and Borís, and Véra with a subtle smile was saying
something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and, asking
whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them. Véra, having
noticed Prince Andrew’s attentions to Natásha, decided that at a
party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the tender passion were
absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when Prince Andrew was alone,
began a conversation with him about feelings in general and about her
sister. With so intellectual a guest as she considered Prince Andrew to
be, she felt that she had to employ her diplomatic tact.
When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Véra was being carried away
by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a
thing that rarely happened with him.
“What do you think?” Véra was saying with an arch smile. “You are
so discerning, Prince, and understand people’s characters so well at
a glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her
attachments? Could she, like other women” (Véra meant herself),
“love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what
I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?”
“I know your sister too little,” replied Prince Andrew, with a
sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, “to
be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that
the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be,”
he added, and looked up at Pierre who was just approaching them.
“Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days,” continued
Véra—mentioning “our days” as people of limited intelligence are
fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the
peculiarities of “our days” and that human characteristics change
with the times—“in our days a girl has so much freedom that the
pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must
be confessed that Natalie is very susceptible.” This return to
the subject of Natalie caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with
discomfort: he was about to rise, but Véra continued with a still more
subtle smile:
“I think no one has been more courted than she,” she went on, “but
till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know,
Count,” she said to Pierre, “even our dear cousin Borís, who,
between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness...”
(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).
Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.
“You are friendly with Borís, aren’t you?” asked Véra.
“Yes, I know him....”
“I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natásha?”
“Oh, there was childish love?” suddenly asked Prince Andrew,
blushing unexpectedly.
“Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le
cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. * Don’t you think so?”
* “Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.”
“Oh, undoubtedly!” said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural
liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful
with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these
jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside.
“Well?” asked Pierre, seeing his friend’s strange animation with
surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natásha as he rose.
“I must... I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andrew. “You