War and Peace
“Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?” asked the old count. “The
countess has been to Mass at the Razumóvskis’ and heard the new prayer.
She says it’s very fine.”
“Yes, I’ve got it,” said Pierre. “The Emperor is to be here tomorrow...
there’s to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility, and they are
talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me congratulate
you!”
“Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?”
“We are again retreating. They say we’re already near Smolénsk,” replied
Pierre.
“O Lord, O Lord!” exclaimed the count. “Where is the manifesto?”
“The Emperor’s appeal? Oh yes!”
Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not find
them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the countess
who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently expecting
Natásha, who had left off singing but had not yet come into the drawing
room.
“On my word, I don’t know what I’ve done with it,” he said.
“There he is, always losing everything!” remarked the countess.
Natásha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face and
sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered, Pierre’s
features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and while still
searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.
“No, really! I’ll drive home, I must have left them there. I’ll
certainly...”
“But you’ll be late for dinner.”
“Oh! And my coachman has gone.”
But Sónya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom, had
found them in Pierre’s hat, where he had carefully tucked them under the
lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.
“No, after dinner,” said the old count, evidently expecting much
enjoyment from that reading.
At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new
chevalier of St. George, Shinshín told them the town news, of the
illness of the old Georgian princess, of Métivier’s disappearance from
Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchín
and accused of being a French “spyer” (so Count Rostopchín had told the
story), and how Rostopchín let him go and assured the people that he was
“not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin.”
“People are being arrested...” said the count. “I’ve told the countess
she should not speak French so much. It’s not the time for it now.”
“And have you heard?” Shinshín asked. “Prince Golítsyn has engaged a
master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak French in
the streets.”
“And how about you, Count Peter Kirílych? If they call up the militia,
you too will have to mount a horse,” remarked the old count, addressing
Pierre.
Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming not
to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.
“Oh yes, the war,” he said. “No! What sort of warrior should I make? And
yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can’t make it out. I don’t
know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these times no
one can answer for himself.”
After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy chair and
with a serious face asked Sónya, who was considered an excellent reader,
to read the appeal.
“To Moscow, our ancient Capital!
“The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He
comes to despoil our beloved country.”
Sónya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count listened
with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.
Natásha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father and
now at Pierre.
Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The countess
shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn expression
in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that the danger
threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshín, with a sarcastic
smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make fun of anything that
gave him the opportunity: Sónya’s reading, any remark of the count’s, or
even the manifesto itself should no better pretext present itself.
After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes the
Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious nobility,
Sónya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the attention that was
being paid to her, read the last words:
“We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that Capital
and in other parts of our realm for consultation, and for the direction
of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy’s path and those
freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the ruin he
hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may Europe delivered
from bondage glorify the name of Russia!”
“Yes, that’s it!” cried the count, opening his moist eyes and sniffing
repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his nose; and he
added, “Let the Emperor but say the word and we’ll sacrifice everything
and begrudge nothing.”
Before Shinshín had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on the
count’s patriotism, Natásha jumped up from her place and ran to her
father.
“What a darling our Papa is!” she cried, kissing him, and she again
looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned to her
with her better spirits.
“There! Here’s a patriot for you!” said Shinshín.
“Not a patriot at all, but simply...” Natásha replied in an injured
tone. “Everything seems funny to you, but this isn’t at all a joke....”
“A joke indeed!” put in the count. “Let him but say the word and we’ll
all go.... We’re not Germans!”
“But did you notice, it says, ‘for consultation’?” said Pierre.
“Never mind what it’s for....”
At this moment, Pétya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came up
to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking voice
that was now deep and now shrill:
“Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it’s as you please,
but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army, because I
can’t... that’s all....”
The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and
turned angrily to her husband.
“That comes of your talking!” said she.
But the count had already recovered from his excitement.
“Come, come!” said he. “Here’s a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You must
study.”
“It’s not nonsense, Papa. Fédya Obolénski is younger than I, and he’s
going too. Besides, all the same I can’t study now when...” Pétya
stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,
“when our Fatherland is in danger.”
“That’ll do, that’ll do—nonsense....”
“But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything.”
“Pétya! Be quiet, I tell you!” cried the count, with a glance at his
wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.
“And I tell you—Peter Kirílych here will also tell you...”
“Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother’s milk has hardly dried on your lips
and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,” and the
count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably to reread
them in his study before having a nap.
“Well, Peter Kirílych, let’s go and have a smoke,” he said.
Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natásha’s unwontedly brilliant eyes,
continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had reduced
him to this condition.
“No, I think I’ll go home.”
“Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don’t
often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine,” said the count
good-naturedly, pointing to Natásha, “only brightens up when you’re
here.”
“Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business...” said
Pierre hurriedly.
“Well, then, au revoir!” said the count, and went out of the room.
“Why are you going? Why are you upset?” asked Natásha, and she looked
challengingly into Pierre’s eyes.
“Because I love you!” was what he wanted to say, but he did not say it,
and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.
“Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No, simply
I have business....”
“Why? No, tell me!” Natásha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.
They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He tried
to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he silently
kissed her hand and went out.
Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostóvs’ any more.
CHAPTER XXI
After the definite refusal he had received, Pétya went to his room
and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,
silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to
notice anything.
Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the Rostóvs’
domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him. That
morning Pétya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and
collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking glass,
gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without saying a word
to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back door, trying to
avoid notice. Pétya decided to go straight to where the Emperor was and
to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting (he imagined the Emperor
to be always surrounded by gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostóv,
in spite of his youth wished to serve his country; that youth could be
no hindrance to loyalty, and that he was ready to... While
dressing, Pétya had prepared many fine things he meant to say to the
gentleman-in-waiting.
It was on the very fact of being so young that Pétya counted for success
in reaching the Emperor—he even thought how surprised everyone would be
at his youthfulness—and yet in the arrangement of his collar and hair
and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to appear a grown-up man.
But the farther he went and the more his attention was diverted by the
ever-increasing crowds moving toward the Krémlin, the less he remembered
to walk with the sedateness and deliberation of a man. As he approached
the Krémlin he even began to avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck
out his elbows in a menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he
was so pressed to the wall by people who probably were unaware of the
patriotic intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his
determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,
rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Pétya stood a peasant woman, a
footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing some
time in the gateway, Pétya tried to move forward in front of the others
without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began resolutely
working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in front of him, who
was the first against whom he directed his efforts, angrily shouted at
him:
“What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don’t you see we’re all
standing still? Then why push?”
“Anybody can shove,” said the footman, and also began working his elbows
to such effect that he pushed Pétya into a very filthy corner of the
gateway.
Pétya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the damp
collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a man’s.
He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if he were
now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he would not be
admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten oneself up
or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of the generals who
drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostóvs’, and Pétya thought of
asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that would not be a
manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed in, the crowd,
carrying Pétya with it, streamed forward into the Krémlin Square which
was already full of people. There were people not only in the square,