War and Peace
continued the vicomte. “I pity the poor husband, that little officer
who gives himself the airs of a monarch.”
Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, “And you were
saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One has to
know how to deal with them.”
Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew’s study like
one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa, took
from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was Caesar’s
Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it in the middle.
“What have you done to Mlle Schérer? She will be quite ill now,”
said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white
hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his eager
face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.
“That abbé is very interesting but he does not see the thing in the
right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but—I do not
know how to express it ... not by a balance of political power....”
It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such abstract
conversation.
“One can’t everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have
you at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a
diplomatist?” asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.
Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.
“Really, I don’t yet know. I don’t like either the one or the
other.”
“But you must decide on something! Your father expects it.”
Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbé as tutor,
and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow
his father dismissed the abbé and said to the young man, “Now go
to Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to
anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasíli, and here is money. Write
to me all about it, and I will help you in everything.” Pierre had
already been choosing a career for three months, and had not decided
on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was speaking.
Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“But he must be a Freemason,” said he, referring to the abbé whom
he had met that evening.
“That is all nonsense.” Prince Andrew again interrupted him, “let
us talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?”
“No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted
to tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for
freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the army;
but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in the world is
not right.”
Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre’s childish words.
He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to such
nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any other
answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naïve question.
“If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no
wars,” he said.
“And that would be splendid,” said Pierre.
Prince Andrew smiled ironically.
“Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about....”
“Well, why are you going to the war?” asked Pierre.
“What for? I don’t know. I must. Besides that I am going....” He
paused. “I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit
me!”
CHAPTER VII
The rustle of a woman’s dress was heard in the next room. Prince
Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it
had had in Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room. Pierre removed his feet from
the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a house
dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose and politely
placed a chair for her.
“How is it,” she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly
and fussily in the easy chair, “how is it Annette never got married?
How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for saying
so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative fellow you
are, Monsieur Pierre!”
“And I am still arguing with your husband. I can’t understand why he
wants to go to the war,” replied Pierre, addressing the princess
with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their
intercourse with young women.
The princess started. Evidently Pierre’s words touched her to the
quick.
“Ah, that is just what I tell him!” said she. “I don’t
understand it; I don’t in the least understand why men can’t live
without wars. How is it that we women don’t want anything of the kind,
don’t need it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here
he is Uncle’s aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so
well known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the
Apráksins’ I heard a lady asking, ‘Is that the famous Prince
Andrew?’ I did indeed.” She laughed. “He is so well received
everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You know
the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were speaking of
how to arrange it. What do you think?”
Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the
conversation, gave no reply.
“When are you starting?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t speak of his going, don’t! I won’t hear it spoken
of,” said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which
she had spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly
ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.
“Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations
must be broken off ... and then you know, André...” (she looked
significantly at her husband) “I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” she
whispered, and a shudder ran down her back.
Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone besides
Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a tone of
frigid politeness.
“What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don’t understand,” said he.
“There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim
of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone
in the country.”
“With my father and sister, remember,” said Prince Andrew gently.
“Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to
be afraid.”
Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a
joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if she
felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though the
gist of the matter lay in that.
“I still can’t understand what you are afraid of,” said Prince
Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.
The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.
“No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have....”
“Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier,” said Prince Andrew.
“You had better go.”
The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip quivered.
Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about the room.
Pierre looked over his spectacles with naïve surprise, now at him and
now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.
“Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?” exclaimed the little
princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a tearful
grimace. “I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you have changed
so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the war and have no
pity for me. Why is it?”
“Lise!” was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed
an entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself
regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:
“You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you behave
like that six months ago?”
“Lise, I beg you to desist,” said Prince Andrew still more
emphatically.
Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened to
all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to bear the
sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.
“Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because.... I assure you
I myself have experienced ... and so ... because ... No, excuse me!
An outsider is out of place here.... No, don’t distress yourself....
Good-by!”
Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.
“No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of
the pleasure of spending the evening with you.”
“No, he thinks only of himself,” muttered the princess without
restraining her angry tears.
“Lise!” said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch
which indicates that patience is exhausted.
Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’ pretty
face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful eyes
glanced askance at her husband’s face, and her own assumed the timid,
deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags its
drooping tail.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she muttered, and lifting her dress with one
hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.
“Good night, Lise,” said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand
as he would have done to a stranger.
CHAPTER VIII
The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre
continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his forehead
with his small hand.
“Let us go and have supper,” he said with a sigh, going to the door.
They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining room.
Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and glass bore
that imprint of newness found in the households of the newly married.
Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the table and,
with a look of nervous agitation such as Pierre had never before seen on
his face, began to talk—as one who has long had something on his mind
and suddenly determines to speak out.
“Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That’s my advice: never marry
till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable of,
and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and have seen
her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and irrevocable
mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing—or all that is
good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be wasted on trifles.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t look at me with such surprise. If you marry
expecting anything from yourself in the future, you will feel at every
step that for you all is ended, all is closed except the drawing
room, where you will be ranged side by side with a court lackey and an
idiot!... But what’s the good?...” and he waved his arm.
Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different and
the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at his friend
in amazement.
“My wife,” continued Prince Andrew, “is an excellent woman, one
of those rare women with whom a man’s honor is safe; but, O God, what
would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one to
whom I mention this, because I like you.”
As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkónski
who had lolled in Anna Pávlovna’s easy chairs and with half-closed
eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his
thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in which
the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with brilliant
light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at ordinary
times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of almost morbid
irritation.
“You don’t understand why I say this,” he continued, “but it is
the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career,” said
he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), “but Bonaparte when
he worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had nothing
but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself up with