War and Peace
To Borís, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship
as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him
her album. Borís sketched two trees in the album and wrote: “Rustic
trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me.”
On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:
La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n’y a pas d’autre asile. *
* Death gives relief and death is peaceful.
Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.
Julie said this was charming
“There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy,” she
said to Borís, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a
book. “It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness
and despair, showing the possibility of consolation.”
In reply Borís wrote these lines:
Aliment de poison d’une âme trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre mélancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et mêle une douceur secrète
A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *
*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.
For Borís, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Borís
read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
Julie and Borís looked on one another as the only souls who understood
one another in a world of indifferent people.
Anna Mikháylovna, who often visited the Karágins, while playing cards
with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie’s dowry (she was
to have two estates in Pénza and the Nizhegórod forests). Anna
Mikháylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to the
wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.
“You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie,” she said to
the daughter. “Borís says his soul finds repose at your house. He has
suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive,” said she to
the mother. “Ah, my dear, I can’t tell you how fond I have grown
of Julie latterly,” she said to her son. “But who could help loving
her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Borís, Borís!”—she paused.
“And how I pity her mother,” she went on; “today she showed me her
accounts and letters from Pénza (they have enormous estates there), and
she, poor thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!”
Borís smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother. He
laughed blandly at her naïve diplomacy but listened to what she had
to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Pénza and
Nizhegórod estates.
Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy adorer and
was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of repulsion for her,
for her passionate desire to get married, for her artificiality, and
a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility of real love still
restrained Borís. His leave was expiring. He spent every day and whole
days at the Karágins’, and every day on thinking the matter over
told himself that he would propose tomorrow. But in Julie’s presence,
looking at her red face and chin (nearly always powdered), her moist
eyes, and her expression of continual readiness to pass at once from
melancholy to an unnatural rapture of married bliss, Borís could not
utter the decisive words, though in imagination he had long regarded
himself as the possessor of those Pénza and Nizhegórod estates and
had apportioned the use of the income from them. Julie saw Borís’
indecision, and sometimes the thought occurred to her that she was
repulsive to him, but her feminine self-deception immediately supplied
her with consolation, and she told herself that he was only shy from
love. Her melancholy, however, began to turn to irritability, and not
long before Borís’ departure she formed a definite plan of action.
Just as Borís’ leave of absence was expiring, Anatole Kurágin made
his appearance in Moscow, and of course in the Karágins’ drawing
room, and Julie, suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and
very attentive to Kurágin.
“My dear,” said Anna Mikháylovna to her son, “I know from a
reliable source that Prince Vasíli has sent his son to Moscow to get
him married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for
her. What do you think of it, my dear?”
The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that whole
month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing all
the revenue from the Pénza estates which he had already mentally
apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another, and
especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Borís. He drove
to the Karágins’ with the firm intention of proposing. Julie met
him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had enjoyed
yesterday’s ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though Borís had
come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore meant to be
tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine inconstancy, of how
easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how their moods depend
solely on who happens to be paying court to them. Julie was offended and
replied that it was true that a woman needs variety, and the same thing
over and over again would weary anyone.
“Then I should advise you...” Borís began, wishing to sting her;
but at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might
have to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have
vainly wasted his efforts—which was a thing he never allowed to
happen.
He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes to
avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and said:
“I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary...”
He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability had
suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were fixed on
him with greedy expectation. “I can always arrange so as not to see
her often,” thought Borís. “The affair has been begun and must be
finished!” He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and said:
“You know my feelings for you!”
There was no need to say more: Julie’s face shone with triumph and
self-satisfaction; but she forced Borís to say all that is said on such
occasions—that he loved her and had never loved any other woman more
than her. She knew that for the Pénza estates and Nizhegórod forests
she could demand this, and she received what she demanded.
The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom and
melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house in
Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.
CHAPTER VI
At the end of January old Count Rostóv went to Moscow with Natásha and
Sónya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it was
impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in
Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near
Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his
future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkónski while he was in Moscow
could not be missed. The Rostóvs’ Moscow house had not been heated
that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the countess
was not with them, the count decided to stay with Márya Dmítrievna
Akhrosímova, who had long been pressing her hospitality on them.
Late one evening the Rostóvs’ four sleighs drove into Márya
Dmítrievna’s courtyard in the old Konyúsheny street. Márya
Dmítrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter, and
her sons were all in the service.
She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,
loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach
to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation—the possibility of
which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing
jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:
on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on
affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after
dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there
were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing meal
at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she played
a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a new book read
to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception and went out to
pay visits, and then only to the most important persons in the town.
She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostóvs arrived and the pulley of
the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the Rostóvs and their
servants. Márya Dmítrievna, with her spectacles hanging down on her
nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall doorway looking with
a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might have thought she was
angry with the travelers and would immediately turn them out, had she
not at the same time been giving careful instructions to the servants
for the accommodation of the visitors and their belongings.
“The count’s things? Bring them here,” she said, pointing to the
portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. “The young ladies’? There
to the left. Now what are you dawdling for?” she cried to the maids.
“Get the samovar ready!... You’ve grown plumper and prettier,” she
remarked, drawing Natásha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold)
to her by the hood. “Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things,
quick!” she shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand.
“You’re half frozen, I’m sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour,
Sónya dear!” she added, turning to Sónya and indicating by this
French greeting her slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude
toward her.
When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things and
tidied themselves up after their journey, Márya Dmítrievna kissed them
all in due order.
“I’m heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was
high time,” she said, giving Natásha a significant look. “The old
man is here and his son’s expected any day. You’ll have to make his
acquaintance. But we’ll speak of that later on,” she added, glancing
at Sónya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her
presence. “Now listen,” she said to the count. “What do you want
tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshín?” she crooked one of her
fingers. “The sniveling Anna Mikháylovna? That’s two. She’s here
with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezúkhov, eh? He is here
too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping after
him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them”—and she pointed to
the girls—“tomorrow I’ll take them first to the Iberian shrine
of the Mother of God, and then we’ll drive to the Super-Rogue’s.
I suppose you’ll have everything new. Don’t judge by me: sleeves
nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irína Vasílevna
came to see me; she was an awful sight—looked as if she had put two
barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without some new
fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?” she asked the count
sternly.
“One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a
purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you
will be so kind, I’ll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a
day, and leave my lassies with you.”