War and Peace
influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre and
Hélène sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the table, a
suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that had nothing
to do with Sergéy Kuzmích—a smile of bashfulness at their own
feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked, much
as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, sauté, and ices, and however they
avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant as
they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances they gave
that the story about Sergéy Kuzmích, the laughter, and the food
were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company was
directed to—Pierre and Hélène. Prince Vasíli mimicked the sobbing
of Sergéy Kuzmích and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his
daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly said:
“Yes... it’s getting on, it will all be settled today.” Anna
Pávlovna threatened him on behalf of “our dear Vyazmítinov,” and
in her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasíli
read a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter’s
happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to the
old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and her sigh
seemed to say: “Yes, there’s nothing left for you and me but to sip
sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these young ones to
be thus boldly, provocatively happy.” “And what nonsense all this is
that I am saying!” thought a diplomatist, glancing at the happy faces
of the lovers. “That’s happiness!”
Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting that
society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a healthy
and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this human feeling
dominated everything else and soared above all their affected chatter.
Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the animation was
evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the footmen waiting at
table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their duties as they looked
at the beautiful Hélène with her radiant face and at the red, broad,
and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It seemed as if the very light
of the candles was focused on those two happy faces alone.
Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased and
embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some occupation.
He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only now and
then detached ideas and impressions from the world of reality shot
unexpectedly through his mind.
“So it is all finished!” he thought. “And how has it all happened?
How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself
alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They are
all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I cannot, I
cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not know, but it
will certainly happen!” thought Pierre, glancing at those dazzling
shoulders close to his eyes.
Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it
awkward to attract everyone’s attention and to be considered a
lucky man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris
possessed of a Helen. “But no doubt it always is and must be so!”
he consoled himself. “And besides, what have I done to bring it about?
How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasíli. Then there
was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I played cards
with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with her. How did it
begin, when did it all come about?” And here he was sitting by her
side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her nearness, her
breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would suddenly seem to him
that it was not she but he was so unusually beautiful, and that that was
why they all looked so at him, and flattered by this general admiration
he would expand his chest, raise his head, and rejoice at his good
fortune. Suddenly he heard a familiar voice repeating something to him a
second time. But Pierre was so absorbed that he did not understand what
was said.
“I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkónski,” repeated
Prince Vasíli a third time. “How absent-minded you are, my dear
fellow.”
Prince Vasíli smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling at
him and Hélène. “Well, what of it, if you all know it?” thought
Pierre. “What of it? It’s the truth!” and he himself smiled his
gentle childlike smile, and Hélène smiled too.
“When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmütz?” repeated
Prince Vasíli, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a
dispute.
“How can one talk or think of such trifles?” thought Pierre.
“Yes, from Olmütz,” he answered, with a sigh.
After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the
drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking leave
of Hélène. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an important
occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go away,
refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a mournful
silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity of his
diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre’s happiness. The old
general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was. “Oh, the
old fool,” he thought. “That Princess Hélène will be beautiful
still when she’s fifty.”
“I think I may congratulate you,” whispered Anna Pávlovna to the
old princess, kissing her soundly. “If I hadn’t this headache I’d
have stayed longer.”
The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her
daughter’s happiness.
While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a long time
alone with Hélène in the little drawing room where they were sitting.
He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained alone with her,
but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt that it was inevitable,
but he could not make up his mind to take the final step. He felt
ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone else’s place here
beside Hélène. “This happiness is not for you,” some inner voice
whispered to him. “This happiness is for those who have not in them
what there is in you.”
But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether she was
satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple manner that
this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest she had ever had.
Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in
the large drawing room. Prince Vasíli came up to Pierre with languid
footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasíli gave
him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just said was
so strange that one could not take it in. But then the expression of
severity changed, and he drew Pierre’s hand downwards, made him sit
down, and smiled affectionately.
“Well, Lëlya?” he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and
addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural to
parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which Prince
Vasíli had only acquired by imitating other parents.
And he again turned to Pierre.
“Sergéy Kuzmích—From all sides—” he said, unbuttoning the top
button of his waistcoat.
Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the story
about Sergéy Kuzmích that interested Prince Vasíli just then, and
Prince Vasíli saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered
something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince was
disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the world
touched Pierre: he looked at Hélène and she too seemed disconcerted,
and her look seemed to say: “Well, it is your own fault.”
“The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!” thought Pierre,
and he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergéy
Kuzmích, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it
properly. Hélène answered with a smile that she too had missed it.
When Prince Vasíli returned to the drawing room, the princess, his
wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.
“Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear...”
“Marriages are made in heaven,” replied the elderly lady.
Prince Vasíli passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat down
on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and seemed to
be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.
“Aline,” he said to his wife, “go and see what they are about.”
The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified and
indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room. Pierre and
Hélène still sat talking just as before.
“Still the same,” she said to her husband.
Prince Vasíli frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and his
face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him. Shaking
himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps went
past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he went
joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant that Pierre
rose in alarm on seeing it.
“Thank God!” said Prince Vasíli. “My wife has told me
everything!” (He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his
daughter.)—“My dear boy... Lëlya... I am very pleased.” (His
voice trembled.) “I loved your father... and she will make you a good
wife... God bless you!...”
He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with his
malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.
“Princess, come here!” he shouted.
The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using
her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful
Hélène’s hand several times. After a while they were left alone
again.
“All this had to be and could not be otherwise,” thought Pierre,
“so it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because
it’s definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt.” Pierre
held the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful
bosom as it rose and fell.
“Hélène!” he said aloud and paused.
“Something special is always said in such cases,” he thought, but
could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.
She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.
“Oh, take those off... those...” she said, pointing to his
spectacles.
Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes have
from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a frightened and
inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and kiss it, but
with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she intercepted his
lips and met them with her own. Her face struck Pierre, by its altered,
unpleasantly excited expression.
“It is too late now, it’s done; besides I love her,” thought
Pierre.
“Je vous aime!” * he said, remembering what has to be said at such
moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of himself.
* “I love you.”
Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezúkhov’s
large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as people
said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions of money.
CHAPTER III
Old Prince Nicholas Bolkónski received a letter from Prince Vasíli
in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying him
a visit. “I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of course I
shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see you at
the same time, my honored benefactor,” wrote Prince Vasíli. “My son
Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you will
allow him personally to express the deep respect that, emulating his