War and Peace
pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.
At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt
that the question of his wife’s guilt which had been tormenting him
the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.
He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denísov’s
request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostóv agreed to be
Dólokhov’s second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements for
the duel with Nesvítski, Bezúkhov’s second. Pierre went home, but
Rostóv with Dólokhov and Denísov stayed on at the club till late,
listening to the gypsies and other singers.
“Well then, till tomorrow at Sokólniki,” said Dólokhov, as he took
leave of Rostóv in the club porch.
“And do you feel quite calm?” Rostóv asked.
Dólokhov paused.
“Well, you see, I’ll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two
words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write
affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be
killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the firm
intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as possible, and
then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostromá used to tell
me. ‘Everyone fears a bear,’ he says, ‘but when you see one your
fear’s all gone, and your only thought is not to let him get away!’
And that’s how it is with me. À demain, mon cher.” *
* Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.
Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvítski drove to the
Sokólniki forest and found Dólokhov, Denísov, and Rostóv already
there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations which
had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face was yellow.
He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about distractedly and
screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He was entirely absorbed
by two considerations: his wife’s guilt, of which after his sleepless
night he had not the slightest doubt, and the guiltlessness of
Dólokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor of a man who was
nothing to him.... “I should perhaps have done the same thing in his
place,” thought Pierre. “It’s even certain that I should have done
the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I shall kill him, or
he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee. Can’t I go away from
here, run away, bury myself somewhere?” passed through his mind. But
just at moments when such thoughts occurred to him, he would ask in a
particularly calm and absent-minded way, which inspired the respect of
the onlookers, “Will it be long? Are things ready?”
When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the barriers,
and the pistols loaded, Nesvítski went up to Pierre.
“I should not be doing my duty, Count,” he said in timid tones,
“and should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done
me in choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very
grave, moment I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no
sufficient ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it....
You were not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous...”
“Oh yes, it is horribly stupid,” said Pierre.
“Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your opponent
will accept them,” said Nesvítski (who like the others concerned in
the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not yet believe that
the affair had come to an actual duel). “You know, Count, it is much
more honorable to admit one’s mistake than to let matters become
irreparable. There was no insult on either side. Allow me to
convey....”
“No! What is there to talk about?” said Pierre. “It’s all the
same.... Is everything ready?” he added. “Only tell me where to go
and where to shoot,” he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.
He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of the
trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand—a fact that he
did not wish to confess.
“Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot,” said he.
“No apologies, none whatever,” said Dólokhov to Denísov (who on
his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to
the appointed place.
The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,
where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine forest
covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up during the
last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at the farther
edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces, left tracks in
the deep wet snow between the place where they had been standing and
Nesvítski’s and Dólokhov’s sabers, which were stuck into the
ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and misty; at
forty paces’ distance nothing could be seen. For three minutes all had
been ready, but they still delayed and all were silent.
CHAPTER V
“Well, begin!” said Dólokhov.
“All right,” said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling
of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly begun
could no longer be averted but was taking its course independently of
men’s will.
Denísov first went to the barrier and announced: “As the
adve’sawies have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your
pistols, and at the word thwee begin to advance.
“O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!” he shouted angrily and stepped aside.
The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and nearer to
one another, beginning to see one another through the mist. They had the
right to fire when they liked as they approached the barrier. Dólokhov
walked slowly without raising his pistol, looking intently with his
bright, sparkling blue eyes into his antagonist’s face. His mouth wore
its usual semblance of a smile.
“So I can fire when I like!” said Pierre, and at the word
“three,” he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and
stepping into the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at
arm’s length, apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left
hand he held carefully back, because he wished to support his right
hand with it and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and
strayed off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet,
then quickly glanced at Dólokhov and, bending his finger as he had been
shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre shuddered
at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations, stood still. The
smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him from seeing anything
for an instant, but there was no second report as he had expected. He
only heard Dólokhov’s hurried steps, and his figure came in view
through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his left side, while
the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face was pale. Rostóv ran
toward him and said something.
“No-o-o!” muttered Dólokhov through his teeth, “no, it’s not
over.” And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the
saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he wiped
it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning face was
pallid and quivered.
“Plea...” began Dólokhov, but could not at first pronounce the
word.
“Please,” he uttered with an effort.
Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dólokhov and
was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dólokhov cried:
“To your barrier!” and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by
his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dólokhov lowered his head to
the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,
drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He sucked
and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but his eyes, still
smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as he mustered his
remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.
“Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!” ejaculated Nesvítski.
“Cover yourself!” even Denísov cried to his adversary.
Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs
helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing
Dólokhov and looked sorrowfully at him. Denísov, Rostóv, and
Nesvítski closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report
and Dólokhov’s angry cry.
“Missed!” shouted Dólokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards
on the snow.
Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,
trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:
“Folly... folly! Death... lies...” he repeated, puckering his face.
Nesvítski stopped him and took him home.
Rostóv and Denísov drove away with the wounded Dólokhov.
The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not answer
a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering Moscow he
suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort, took Rostóv, who
was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostóv was struck by the
totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on
Dólokhov’s face.
“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
“Bad! But it’s not that, my friend—” said Dólokhov with a
gasping voice. “Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don’t matter,
but I have killed her, killed... She won’t get over it! She won’t
survive....”
“Who?” asked Rostóv.
“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and
Dólokhov pressed Rostóv’s hand and burst into tears.
When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostóv that he was
living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not survive it.
He implored Rostóv to go on and prepare her.
Rostóv went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise
learned that Dólokhov the brawler, Dólokhov the bully, lived in Moscow
with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most affectionate
of sons and brothers.
CHAPTER VI
Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg and in
Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after the
duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained in his
father’s room, that huge room in which Count Bezúkhov had died.
He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that
had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,
thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not fall
asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace the
room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early days of
their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid, passionate look on
her face, and then immediately he saw beside her Dólokhov’s handsome,
insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen it at the banquet, and
then that same face pale, quivering, and suffering, as it had been when
he reeled and sank on the snow.
“What has happened?” he asked himself. “I have killed her lover,
yes, killed my wife’s lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come
to do it?”—“Because you married her,” answered an inner voice.
“But in what was I to blame?” he asked. “In marrying her without
loving her; in deceiving yourself and her.” And he vividly recalled
that moment after supper at Prince Vasíli’s, when he spoke those
words he had found so difficult to utter: “I love you.” “It all
comes from that! Even then I felt it,” he thought. “I felt then that
it was not so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out.”
He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.
Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection of
how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into his
study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his head
steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and at
his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing respectful