War and Peace
found expression in calling her maid “my dear” and speaking to her
with exaggerated politeness.
“I am very sorry, ma’am,” answered the maid.
“Ask the count to come to me.”
The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look as
usual.
“Well, little countess? What a sauté of game au madère we are to
have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Tarás were
not ill-spent. He is worth it!”
He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands ruffling
his gray hair.
“What are your commands, little countess?”
“You see, my dear... What’s that mess?” she said, pointing to his
waistcoat. “It’s the sauté, most likely,” she added with a smile.
“Well, you see, Count, I want some money.”
Her face became sad.
“Oh, little countess!” ... and the count began bustling to get out
his pocketbook.
“I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles,” and taking
out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband’s waistcoat.
“Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who’s there?” he called out
in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call will
rush to obey the summons. “Send Dmítri to me!”
Dmítri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the count’s
house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the room.
“This is what I want, my dear fellow,” said the count to the
deferential young man who had entered. “Bring me...” he reflected
a moment, “yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don’t
bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean ones
for the countess.”
“Yes, Dmítri, clean ones, please,” said the countess, sighing
deeply.
“When would you like them, your excellency?” asked Dmítri. “Allow
me to inform you... But, don’t be uneasy,” he added, noticing that
the count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always
a sign of approaching anger. “I was forgetting... Do you wish it
brought at once?”
“Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess.”
“What a treasure that Dmítri is,” added the count with a smile when
the young man had departed. “There is never any ‘impossible’ with
him. That’s a thing I hate! Everything is possible.”
“Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,”
said the countess. “But I am in great need of this sum.”
“You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift,” said the
count, and having kissed his wife’s hand he went back to his study.
When Anna Mikháylovna returned from Count Bezúkhov’s the money, all
in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the countess’
little table, and Anna Mikháylovna noticed that something was agitating
her.
“Well, my dear?” asked the countess.
“Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is so
ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word...”
“Annette, for heaven’s sake don’t refuse me,” the countess
began, with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,
elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.
Anna Mikháylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be
ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.
“This is for Borís from me, for his outfit.”
Anna Mikháylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess
wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were
kindhearted, and because they—friends from childhood—had to think
about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....
But those tears were pleasant to them both.
CHAPTER XVIII
Countess Rostóva, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was
already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen into
his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes. From
time to time he went out to ask: “Hasn’t she come yet?” They
were expecting Márya Dmítrievna Akhrosímova, known in society as le
terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for
common sense and frank plainness of speech. Márya Dmítrievna was known
to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both
cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told
good stories about her, while none the less all without exception
respected and feared her.
In the count’s room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked
of the war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the
recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew
it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were
smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his head
first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers with evident
pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two neighbors, whom he
egged on against each other.
One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and wrinkled
face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a most fashionable
young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as if quite at home and,
having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his mouth, was inhaling the
smoke spasmodically and screwing up his eyes. This was an old bachelor,
Shinshín, a cousin of the countess’, a man with “a sharp tongue”
as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to be condescending to
his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer of the Guards,
irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held his pipe in the
middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled the smoke, letting
it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This was Lieutenant Berg, an
officer in the Semënov regiment with whom Borís was to travel to join
the army, and about whom Natásha had teased her elder sister Véra,
speaking of Berg as her “intended.” The count sat between them and
listened attentively. His favorite occupation when not playing boston, a
card game he was very fond of, was that of listener, especially when he
succeeded in setting two loquacious talkers at one another.
“Well, then, old chap, mon très honorable Alphonse Kárlovich,”
said Shinshín, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary Russian
expressions with the choicest French phrases—which was a peculiarity
of his speech. “Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur l’état; *
you want to make something out of your company?”
* You expect to make an income out of the government.
“No, Peter Nikoláevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry
the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own
position now, Peter Nikoláevich...”
Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His
conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain calm
and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no direct bearing
on himself. He could remain silent for hours without being at all put
out of countenance himself or making others uncomfortable, but as
soon as the conversation concerned himself he would begin to talk
circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.
“Consider my position, Peter Nikoláevich. Were I in the cavalry I
should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even
with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and
thirty,” said he, looking at Shinshín and the count with a joyful,
pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must
always be the chief desire of everyone else.
“Besides that, Peter Nikoláevich, by exchanging into the Guards
I shall be in a more prominent position,” continued Berg, “and
vacancies occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think
what can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to
put a little aside and to send something to my father,” he went on,
emitting a smoke ring.
“La balance y est... * A German knows how to skin a flint, as the
proverb says,” remarked Shinshín, moving his pipe to the other side
of his mouth and winking at the count.
* So that squares matters.
The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that Shinshín
was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or indifference,
continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards he had already
gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps; how in wartime
the company commander might get killed and he, as senior in the company,
might easily succeed to the post; how popular he was with everyone in
the regiment, and how satisfied his father was with him. Berg evidently
enjoyed narrating all this, and did not seem to suspect that others,
too, might have their own interests. But all he said was so prettily
sedate, and the naïveté of his youthful egotism was so obvious, that
he disarmed his hearers.
“Well, my boy, you’ll get along wherever you go—foot or
horse—that I’ll warrant,” said Shinshín, patting him on the
shoulder and taking his feet off the sofa.
Berg smiled joyously. The count, followed by his guests, went into the
drawing room.
It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled guests,
expecting the summons to zakúska, * avoid engaging in any long
conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in order
to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The host and
hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at one another,
and the visitors try to guess from these glances who, or what, they are
waiting for—some important relation who has not yet arrived, or a dish
that is not yet ready.
* Hors d’oeuvres.
Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in the
middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come across,
blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make him talk,
but he went on naïvely looking around through his spectacles as if in
search of somebody and answered all her questions in monosyllables. He
was in the way and was the only one who did not notice the fact. Most of
the guests, knowing of the affair with the bear, looked with curiosity
at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering how such a clumsy, modest
fellow could have played such a prank on a policeman.
“You have only lately arrived?” the countess asked him.
“Oui, madame,” replied he, looking around him.
“You have not yet seen my husband?”
“Non, madame.” He smiled quite inappropriately.
“You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it’s very
interesting.”
“Very interesting.”
The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikháylovna. The latter
understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and
sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he
answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other
guests were all conversing with one another. “The Razumóvskis... It
was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apráksina...” was heard
on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.
“Márya Dmítrievna?” came her voice from there.
“Herself,” came the answer in a rough voice, and Márya Dmítrievna
entered the room.
All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very
oldest rose. Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,
holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood
surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if
rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke in Russian.
“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her
children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all
others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count
who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay?
Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? Just
see how these nestlings are growing up,” and she pointed to the girls.