War and Peace
take her for her connections and wealth. Are there no women living
unmarried, and even the happier for it?” So thought Prince Bolkónski
while dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded
an immediate answer. Prince Vasíli had brought his son with the evident
intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask
for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad. “Well,
I’ve nothing against it,” the prince said to himself, “but he must
be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see.”
“That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!” he added
aloud.
He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing rapidly
round the company. He noticed the change in the little princess’
dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s ribbon, Princess Mary’s unbecoming
coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne’s and Anatole’s smiles, and the
loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. “Got herself
up like a fool!” he thought, looking irritably at her. “She is
shameless, and he ignores her!”
He went straight up to Prince Vasíli.
“Well! How d’ye do? How d’ye do? Glad to see you!”
“Friendship laughs at distance,” began Prince Vasíli in his usual
rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. “Here is my second son; please
love and befriend him.”
Prince Bolkónski surveyed Anatole.
“Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!” he said. “Well, come and
kiss me,” and he offered his cheek.
Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and perfect
composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his father had
told him to expect.
Prince Bolkónski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the sofa
and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasíli, pointed to it and began
questioning him about political affairs and news. He seemed to listen
attentively to what Prince Vasíli said, but kept glancing at Princess
Mary.
“And so they are writing from Potsdam already?” he said, repeating
Prince Vasíli’s last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his
daughter.
“Is it for visitors you’ve got yourself up like that, eh?” said
he. “Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for
the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you are
never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent.”
“It was my fault, mon père,” interceded the little princess, with a
blush.
“You must do as you please,” said Prince Bolkónski, bowing to his
daughter-in-law, “but she need not make a fool of herself, she’s
plain enough as it is.”
And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who was
reduced to tears.
“On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,” said
Prince Vasíli.
“Now you, young prince, what’s your name?” said Prince Bolkónski,
turning to Anatole, “come here, let us talk and get acquainted.”
“Now the fun begins,” thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile
beside the old prince.
“Well, my dear boy, I hear you’ve been educated abroad, not taught
to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,
my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?” asked the old man,
scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.
“No, I have been transferred to the line,” said Anatole, hardly able
to restrain his laughter.
“Ah! That’s a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the
Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.
Well, are you off to the front?”
“No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am attached...
what is it I am attached to, Papa?” said Anatole, turning to his
father with a laugh.
“A splendid soldier, splendid! ‘What am I attached to!’ Ha, ha,
ha!” laughed Prince Bolkónski, and Anatole laughed still louder.
Suddenly Prince Bolkónski frowned.
“You may go,” he said to Anatole.
Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.
“And so you’ve had him educated abroad, Prince Vasíli, haven’t
you?” said the old prince to Prince Vasíli.
“I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education there
is much better than ours.”
“Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The
lad’s a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now.” He took
Prince Vasíli’s arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were
alone together, Prince Vasíli announced his hopes and wishes to the old
prince.
“Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can’t part from
her?” said the old prince angrily. “What an idea! I’m ready for it
tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better. You
know my principles—everything aboveboard! I will ask her tomorrow in
your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can stay and
I’ll see.” The old prince snorted. “Let her marry, it’s all the
same to me!” he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting
from his son.
“I will tell you frankly,” said Prince Vasíli in the tone of
a crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so
keen-sighted a companion. “You know, you see right through people.
Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an excellent
son or kinsman.”
“All right, all right, we’ll see!”
As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time
without male society, on Anatole’s appearance all the three women of
Prince Bolkónski’s household felt that their life had not been real
till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing immediately
increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in
darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full of significance.
Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The
handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband absorbed
all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave, determined, manly, and
magnanimous. She felt convinced of that. Thousands of dreams of a future
family life continually rose in her imagination. She drove them away and
tried to conceal them.
“But am I not too cold with him?” thought the princess. “I try
to be reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him
already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine
that I do not like him.”
And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to her new
guest. “Poor girl, she’s devilish ugly!” thought Anatole.
Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole’s
arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young woman
without any definite position, without relations or even a country, did
not intend to devote her life to serving Prince Bolkónski, to reading
aloud to him and being friends with Princess Mary. Mademoiselle
Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian prince who, able to
appreciate at a glance her superiority to the plain, badly dressed,
ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in love with her and carry her
off; and here at last was a Russian prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew
a story, heard from her aunt but finished in her own way, which she
liked to repeat to herself. It was the story of a girl who had been
seduced, and to whom her poor mother (sa pauvre mère) appeared, and
reproached her for yielding to a man without being married. Mademoiselle
Bourienne was often touched to tears as in imagination she told this
story to him, her seducer. And now he, a real Russian prince, had
appeared. He would carry her away and then sa pauvre mère would appear
and he would marry her. So her future shaped itself in Mademoiselle
Bourienne’s head at the very time she was talking to Anatole about
Paris. It was not calculation that guided her (she did not even for a
moment consider what she should do), but all this had long been familiar
to her, and now that Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around
him and she wished and tried to please him as much as possible.
The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,
unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the
familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any
struggle, but with naïve and lighthearted gaiety.
Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man
tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the
spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was
beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle Bourienne
that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him with great
suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless actions.
After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess Mary was
asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in high spirits,
came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside Mademoiselle
Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully joyous emotion.
Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately poetic world and
the look she felt upon her made that world still more poetic. But
Anatole’s expression, though his eyes were fixed on her, referred not
to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne’s little
foot, which he was then touching with his own under the clavichord.
Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess Mary, and in her
lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and hope that was also new
to the princess.
“How she loves me!” thought Princess Mary. “How happy I am now,
and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?
Can it be possible?” she thought, not daring to look at his face, but
still feeling his eyes gazing at her.
In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole
kissed Princess Mary’s hand. She did not know how she found the
courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came near
to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up and
kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne’s hand. (This was not etiquette, but
then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!) Mademoiselle
Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened look.
“What delicacy!” thought the princess. “Is it possible that
Amélie” (Mademoiselle Bourienne) “thinks I could be jealous of her,
and not value her pure affection and devotion to me?” She went up
to her and kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little
princess’ hand.
“No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are behaving
well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!” she said. And
smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.
CHAPTER V
They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as he
got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.
“Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind—yes,
kind, that is the chief thing,” thought Princess Mary; and fear, which
she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round, it
seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen in the
dark corner. And this someone was he—the devil—and he was also this
man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.
She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.
Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a long
time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at someone, now
working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of her pauvre mère
rebuking her for her fall.
The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly made.
She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every position was
awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her now more than
ever because Anatole’s presence had vividly recalled to her the time
when she was not like that and when everything was light and gay. She
sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and nightcap and Katie, sleepy