War and Peace
father, he feels for you.”
“It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors are
coming to us of their own accord,” incautiously remarked the little
princess on hearing the news.
Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.
A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasíli’s servants came one
evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.
Old Bolkónski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasíli’s
character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and
Alexander Prince Vasíli had risen to high position and honors. And now,
from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little princess,
he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion changed into
a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever he mentioned
him. On the day of Prince Vasíli’s arrival, Prince Bolkónski was
particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether he was in a bad
temper because Prince Vasíli was coming, or whether his being in a bad
temper made him specially annoyed at Prince Vasíli’s visit, he was
in a bad temper, and in the morning Tíkhon had already advised the
architect not to go to the prince with his report.
“Do you hear how he’s walking?” said Tíkhon, drawing the
architect’s attention to the sound of the prince’s footsteps.
“Stepping flat on his heels—we know what that means....”
However, at nine o’clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable
collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day
before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the
habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still
visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of the
soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince went
through the conservatories, the serfs’ quarters, and the outbuildings,
frowning and silent.
“Can a sleigh pass?” he asked his overseer, a venerable man,
resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him
back to the house.
“The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor.”
The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. “God be
thanked,” thought the overseer, “the storm has blown over!”
“It would have been hard to drive up, your honor,” he added. “I
heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor.”
The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,
frowning.
“What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?” he said in
his shrill, harsh voice. “The road is not swept for the princess my
daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!”
“Your honor, I thought...”
“You thought!” shouted the prince, his words coming more and more
rapidly and indistinctly. “You thought!... Rascals! Blackguards!...
I’ll teach you to think!” and lifting his stick he swung it and
would have hit Alpátych, the overseer, had not the latter instinctively
avoided the blow. “Thought... Blackguards...” shouted the prince
rapidly.
But although Alpátych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding the
stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly before
him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he continued
to shout: “Blackguards!... Throw the snow back on the road!” did not
lift his stick again but hurried into the house.
Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew
that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle
Bourienne with a radiant face that said: “I know nothing, I am the
same as usual,” and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with downcast
eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such occasions
she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could not.
She thought: “If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not
sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he will
say (as he has done before) that I’m in the dumps.”
The prince looked at his daughter’s frightened face and snorted.
“Fool... or dummy!” he muttered.
“And the other one is not here. They’ve been telling tales,” he
thought—referring to the little princess who was not in the dining
room.
“Where is the princess?” he asked. “Hiding?”
“She is not very well,” answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with
a bright smile, “so she won’t come down. It is natural in her
state.”
“Hm! Hm!” muttered the prince, sitting down.
His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he
flung it away. Tíkhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little
princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the prince
that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to appear.
“I am afraid for the baby,” she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:
“Heaven knows what a fright might do.”
In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear, and
with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not
realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The prince
reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his contempt
for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to life at Bald
Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle Bourienne, spent whole
days with her, asked her to sleep in her room, and often talked with her
about the old prince and criticized him.
“So we are to have visitors, mon prince?” remarked Mademoiselle
Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. “His
Excellency Prince Vasíli Kurágin and his son, I understand?” she
said inquiringly.
“Hm!—his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the
service,” said the prince disdainfully. “Why his son is coming I
don’t understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know.
I don’t want him.” (He looked at his blushing daughter.) “Are you
unwell today? Eh? Afraid of the ‘minister’ as that idiot Alpátych
called him this morning?”
“No, mon père.”
Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice
of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the
conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and
after the soup the prince became more genial.
After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little princess
was sitting at a small table, chattering with Másha, her maid. She grew
pale on seeing her father-in-law.
She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her cheeks
had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.
“Yes, I feel a kind of oppression,” she said in reply to the
prince’s question as to how she felt.
“Do you want anything?”
“No, merci, mon père.”
“Well, all right, all right.”
He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpátych stood with
bowed head.
“Has the snow been shoveled back?”
“Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven’s sake... It was only
my stupidity.”
“All right, all right,” interrupted the prince, and laughing his
unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpátych to kiss, and then
proceeded to his study.
Prince Vasíli arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by
coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to
one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.
Prince Vasíli and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.
Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo before a
table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly fixed his
large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a continual round
of amusement which someone for some reason had to provide for him.
And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and a rich and ugly
heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought, turn out very well
and amusingly. “And why not marry her if she really has so much money?
That never does any harm,” thought Anatole.
He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had
become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his
father’s room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to
him. Prince Vasíli’s two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked
round with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter
entered, as if to say: “Yes, that’s how I want you to look.”
“I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?” Anatole asked,
as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been
mentioned during the journey.
“Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious
with the old prince.”
“If he starts a row I’ll go away,” said Prince Anatole. “I
can’t bear those old men! Eh?”
“Remember, for you everything depends on this.”
In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants’ rooms that
the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of both had
been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in her room,
vainly trying to master her agitation.
“Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never
happen!” she said, looking at herself in the glass. “How shall I
enter the drawing room? Even if I like him I can’t now be myself with
him.” The mere thought of her father’s look filled her with terror.
The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received
from Másha, the lady’s maid, the necessary report of how handsome the
minister’s son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and with
what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while the son
had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time. Having received
this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne, whose
chattering voices had reached her from the corridor, went into Princess
Mary’s room.
“You know they’ve come, Marie?” said the little princess, waddling
in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.
She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the morning,
but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully done and her
face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its sunken and faded
outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg society, it was still
more noticeable how much plainer she had become. Some unobtrusive touch
had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne’s toilet which rendered her
fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.
“What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?” she
began. “They’ll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing
room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself
up at all!”
The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and merrily
began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary should be
dressed. Princess Mary’s self-esteem was wounded by the fact that
the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both
her companions’ not having the least conception that it could be
otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them
would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to
dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her
beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took
on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she
submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women
quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so plain that
neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they began dressing
her with perfect sincerity, and with the naïve and firm conviction
women have that dress can make a face pretty.
“No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty,” said Lise, looking
sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. “You have a maroon
dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life may
be at stake. But this one is too light, it’s not becoming!”
It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary