War and Peace: Original Version

The eldest princess was followed out of the bedroom by Prince Vasily. He staggered as far as the divan on which Pierre was sitting and fell onto it, covering his eyes with his hand. Pierre noticed that he was pale and his lower jaw was jerking and shuddering feverishly.

“Ah, my friend,” he said, taking Pierre by the elbow, and there was a sincerity and infirmity in his voice that Pierre had never noticed in it before. “We sin so much, we deceive so much, and all for what? I am over fifty, my friend … for me … Everything will end in death, everything. Death is terrible.” He burst into tears.

Anna Mikhailovna was the last to emerge. She walked across to Pierre with slow, quiet steps.

“Pierre!” she said.

Pierre looked at her enquiringly. She kissed the young man on the forehead, wetting his face with her tears. She paused before speaking.

“He has passed away …”

Pierre looked at her through his spectacles.

“Come with me, I will walk with you. Try to cry; nothing brings more relief than tears.”

She led him into the dark drawing room, and Pierre was glad that no one there could see his face. Anna Mikhailovna left him there, and when she returned he was sound asleep with his head lying on his hand.

The next morning Anna Mikhailovna said to Pierre:

“Yes, my friend, it is a great loss for all of us, and especially for you. But God will support you, you are young and now, I hope, the owner of immense wealth. The will has not yet been opened. I know you well enough to be sure that it will not turn your head, but it imposes obligations on you, and you must be a man.”

Pierre said nothing.

“Afterwards perhaps I shall tell you that if I had not been there, God only knows what might have happened. You know that two days ago my uncle promised me not to forget Boris, but he had no time. I hope, my friend, that you will carry out your father’s wish.”

Pierre did not understand anything and, blushing shyly, which was something that he rarely did, he stared at Anna Mikhailovna without speaking. After her talk with Pierre, Anna Mikhailovna drove back to the Rostovs’ house and went to bed. On waking in the morning, she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezukhov’s death. She said that the count had died as she herself would wish to die, that his end was not merely touching but edifying, that she could not recall it without tears, and that she did not know who had behaved best during those terrible and solemn moments, the father, who had remembered everything and everyone in his final moments and spoken such touching words to his son, or Pierre, who had been a pitiful sight, he was so crushed, and how, despite that, he had tried to conceal his sorrow in order not to distress his dying father.

“It is hard, but it is salutary; the soul is exalted when one sees such people as the old count and his worthy son,” she said. She also spoke, in disapproving terms, of the actions of the princess and Prince Vasily, but only in a whisper and as a great secret.

XXXII

At Bleak Hills, the estate of Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, they were expecting the arrival of the young Prince Andrei and his princess any day, but this anticipation did not disrupt the strict order which life followed in the home of the old prince. Ever since he had been exiled to the country under Tsar Paul, General-in-Chief Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, known in society as the King of Prussia, had never left Bleak Hills, living there with his daughter, Princess Marya, and her companion Mademoiselle Bourienne. Even during the present reign, although he had been granted permission to enter the two capitals, he had continued to live in the country without leaving it once, saying that if anybody needed him, then that person would have to travel the one hundred and fifty versts to Bleak Hills, but he had no need of anyone or anything. There were, he would say, only two sources of human vice: idleness and superstition; and only two virtues: activity and intelligence. He conducted his daughter’s education himself and, in order to develop in her both of the principal virtues, until the age of twenty he gave her lessons in algebra and arranged her entire life in a pattern of ceaseless study. He himself was constantly occupied either with writing his memoirs, or calculations from higher mathematics, or turning snuffboxes on a lathe, or working in the garden and supervising the construction projects which went on unceasingly on his estate, or reading his favourite authors. Since the primary condition of effective activity is order, in his life order was also carried to the ultimate degree of precision. His appearances at table were all made under the same unvarying conditions, not just at the same hour, but the same minute. With the people who surrounded him, from his daughter to the servants, the prince was brusque and unvaryingly demanding and therefore, not being cruel, he inspired fear and respect such as not even the most cruel of men could have easily commanded. Despite the fact that he was retired and now had no influence in affairs of state, every high official in the province where the prince’s estate lay regarded it as his duty to report to him and, just like the architect, the gardener and Princess Marya, waited for the appointed hour of the prince’s appearance in the high-ceilinged waiting room. Everyone in that waiting room experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear at that moment when the enormous, tall door of the study opened and the old man’s short figure appeared in that powdered wig, with those small, dry hands and grey, beetling brows which sometimes, when he scowled, veiled the bright gleam in his intelligent and youthful-looking eyes.

On the morning of the day of the young couple’s arrival, Princess Marya, following her custom, entered the footman’s room at the usual time for the morning salutation, crossing herself fearfully and inwardly reciting a prayer. Every day she went in and every day she prayed for this daily meeting to pass successfully.

The powdered old manservant sitting in the footman’s room rose quietly to his feet and declared in a whisper: “If you please!”

From behind the door she could hear the regular sounds of a lathe. The princess timidly tugged at the door, which always opened easily and smoothly, and stopped in the doorway. The prince was working at the lathe and, after glancing round, he continued with what he was doing.

The huge study was filled with things that were obviously in constant use. The large desk with books and maps lying on it, the tall glazed bookcases of the library with keys in their doors, the marble table for writing in a standing position, with an open notebook lying on it, the turner’s lathe with the tools laid out and wood shavings scattered around it – everything evinced constant, varied and ordered activity. The movements of the small foot shod in a Tatar boot sewn with silver thread and the firm pressure of the lean, sinewy hand betrayed in the prince the strength of fresh old age, still stubborn and capable of great endurance. After making a few more turns, he removed his foot from the pedal of the lathe, wiped off his chisel, dropped it into a leather pocket attached to the lathe, went over to the desk and called his daughter to him. He never blessed his children and, after presenting her with his stubbly cheek, still unshaven that day, he merely said, looking her over severely and yet at the same time with attentive affection: “Are you well? Well then, sit down!” (As always, he spoke curtly and abruptly, opening the geometry notebook written in his own hand and moving his armchair up with his foot.)

“For tomorrow!” he said, rapidly locating the right page and marking from one paragraph to another with his tough nail. The princess bent down over the notebook on the table. “Wait, there’s a letter for you,” the old man said suddenly, taking an envelope written in a woman’s hand out of a pocket fixed above the desk and tossing it onto the desk.

Blotches of red covered the princess’s face at the sight of the letter. She hastily took it and bent over it.

“From Héloise?” the prince asked, his cold smile revealing teeth that were still sound, but gapped and yellowed.

“Yes, from Julie Akhrosimova,” said the princess, with a timid glance and a timid smile.

“I shall let two more letters through, but I shall read the third one,” the prince said strictly, “I fear you are writing a lot of drivel. I shall read the third one.”

“Read this one if you wish, father,” replied the princess, blushing even more intensely and offering him the letter.

“The third one I said, the third one,” the prince shouted curtly, pushing the letter away. Leaning his elbows on the desk, he pulled across the notebook with the geometry diagrams.

“Well now, my lady,” the old man began, bending down close to his daughter and placing one hand on the back of the chair in which the princess was sitting, so that the princess felt herself enveloped on all sides by her father’s long-familiar acrid scent of tobacco and old age.

“Well now, my lady, these triangles are congruent: be so good as to show me the angle abc…”

The princess glanced in fright at her father’s gleaming eyes, so close to her: red blotches flooded across her face and it was clear that she did not understand anything and was so afraid that her fear would prevent her from understanding all of her father’s subsequent explanations, no matter how clear they might be. Whether the teacher was at fault or the pupil, every day the same scene was repeated: everything blurred in front of the princess’s eyes, she could not see anything, she could not hear anything, she could only feel her strict father’s dry, stern face beside her, feel his breath and his smell and only think about getting out of the study as quickly as possible and mastering the problem in the calm freedom of her own room. The old man lost his temper: he scraped the chair on which he was sitting away from the desk and then back towards it again, trying to control himself and not fly into a passion, yet almost every time he did fly into a passion, upbraiding her and sometimes flinging the notebook away.

The princess gave the wrong answer.

“Well, what a fool you are!” cried the prince pushing the notebook aside and turning away sharply: but he immediately rose to his feet, strode up and down, touched the princess’s hair with his hands and sat down again. He moved his chair up closer to the desk and continued his exposition in a forcibly restrained voice.

“This will not do from you, princess,” he said as the princess, having picked up the notebook with the set lessons and closed it, was preparing to leave. “Mathematics is a great matter, my lady. And I do not want you to be like our stupid young ladies, I do not want that. You will enjoy it when you get used to it.” He patted her on the cheek. “You’ll forget all about this foolishness.” She was about to go out, but he stopped her with a gesture and took a new book with uncut pages off the tall table.

THE MATHS LESSON Wood engraving by K.I. Rikhai after the drawing by M.S. Bashilov, 1866 (#ulink_658a7392-5823-522f-9d9b-d05b33341d7e)

“And here we have a certain Key to the Sacrament which your Héloise sends you. Religious. But I don’t interfere in anybody’s faith. I’ve looked it through. Take it. Right, off you go, off you go!”

He patted her on the cheek and locked the door behind her himself.

XXXIII

Princess Marya went back to her room with the sad, frightened expression which rarely left her and made her unlovely, unhealthy face even less lovely, and sat down at her writing desk, adorned with miniature portraits and cluttered with notebooks and books. The princess was as disorganised as her father was organised. She put the geometry notebook down and impatiently unsealed the letter. Though she was not yet reading, but merely weighing, as it were, the pleasure to come, as she turned over the small pages of the letter her face was transformed; she became visibly calmer, she sat in her favourite armchair in the corner of the room, beside an immense pier glass, and began reading. The letter was from the princess’s closest friend since her childhood: this friend was that same Julie Akhrosimova who had been at the name-day celebrations at the Rostovs’ house. Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova’s estate bordered on Prince Bolkonsky’s and she spent two months of the summer in the country. The prince respected Marya Dmitrievna, although he made fun of her. Marya Dmitrievna addressed nobody but the prince with formal politeness, and she held him up as an example to all modern-day people.

Julie wrote as follows:

Chère et excellente amie. What a fearful and terrible thing separation is! However much I try to tell myself that half of my existence and my happiness lies in you, that despite the distance that separates us, the bonds that unite our hearts are indissoluble, my heart revolts against fate and, for all the pleasures and distractions by which I am surrounded, I cannot suppress a certain secret sadness that I have felt in the depths of my heart since the time of our separation. Why are we not together, like last summer, in our large study, on the blue divan, on the divan of ‘confessions’? Why can I not, as I did three months ago, draw new moral strength from your glance, so gentle, calm and astute, which I loved so much and which I see before me as I write to you?

Having read to this point, Princess Marya sighed and glanced round into the pier glass that stood on her right. The mirror reflected her unlovely, weak body and thin face. The eyes, always sad, now regarded themselves in the mirror with especial hopelessness. “She is flattering me,” the princess thought, then turned away and continued reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: the princess’s eyes, large, deep and radiant (sometimes it seemed as if beams of warm light radiated from them), really were so fine that very often, despite the plainness of all the rest of her face, these eyes became more alluring than beauty itself. But the princess had never seen the fine expression of her eyes, the expression that they assumed in those moments when she was not thinking about herself. Her face, like everybody else’s, assumed an artificial, unnatural, foolish expression whenever it looked at itself in the mirror. She continued reading:

The whole of Moscow is talking of nothing but the war. One of my two brothers is already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are on the march to the border. Our dear sovereign is leaving St. Petersburg, and it is assumed that he intends to expose his own precious life to the fortunes of war. God grant that the ogre of Corsica who is subverting the order of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom the Almighty in His mercy has set over us as our ruler. In addition to my brothers, this war has also deprived me of one of the connections that lie closest to my heart. I speak of the young Nikolai Rostov, who in his enthusiasm was unable to endure inaction and left the university in order to join the army. I confess to you, dear Marya, that despite his extreme youth, his departure for the army was a great sorrow for me. This young man, about whom I spoke to you last summer, has in him so much of the nobility and genuine youthful valour that one encounters so rarely in our times among the old men of twenty. In particular, he has such an open and feeling heart. He is so pure and full of poetry that my relations with him, for all their fleeting nature, have been one of the sweetest consolations of my own poor heart, which has already suffered so much. I will tell you some time about our parting and all that was said at that parting. It is all still too fresh … Ah! my dear friend, you are fortunate not to know these scalding delights, these scalding sorrows. You are fortunate because the latter are ordinarily stronger than the former. I know very well that Count Nikolai is too young to become anything other than a friend to me. But this sweet friendship, these relations that are so poetic and so pure, have been my heart’s necessity. But enough of that.

The main news with which the whole of Moscow is occupied is the death of old Count Bezukhov and his legacy. Can you believe that the three princesses received some mere trifle, Prince Vasily received nothing at all and Pierre is the heir to everything and, in addition, has actually been declared a legitimate son and therefore Count Bezukhov and the owner of the largest fortune in Russia! They say that Prince Vasily played a quite disgusting role in this whole business and that he departed for St. Petersburg in a state of great confusion. I confess to you that I have a very poor understanding of all these affairs to do with last wills and testaments; I only know that since the young man whom we all knew by the simple name of Pierre became the Count Bezukhov and the owner of one of the finest fortunes in Russia, I have been amusing myself by observing the change in the tone of the mamans who have marriageable daughters and of the young ladies themselves with regard to this gentleman who, let it be said in parentheses, has always seemed to me quite insignificant. Only my maman continues to criticise him with her usual harshness. Since everyone has been amusing themselves for two years now by seeking out fiancés for me, whom for the most part I do not even know, Moscow’s matrimonial gossip now makes me the Countess Bezukhova. But you understand that I do not desire that in the least. On the subject of marriages, do you know that recently the universal aunty, Anna Mikhailovna, confided to me in the very strictest secrecy a scheme to arrange your marriage? And to none other than Prince Vasily’s son Anatole, whom they wish to settle by marrying him to a wealthy noble spinster, and the parents’ choice has fallen on you. I do not know how you will regard this matter, but I considered it my duty to forewarn you. They say that he is very good-looking and a great hothead. That is all I was able to learn about him.

But enough idle chatter. I am finishing my second page, and maman has sent for me in order to go to dinner at the Apraksins’.

Read the mystical book that I am sending you. It is immensely popular here. Although there are some things in it which are hard for the feeble human intellect to comprehend, it is an excellent book, reading it calms and exalts the soul. Goodbye. My compliments to your father and my greetings to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you with all my heart.

Julie

P.S. Send me news of your brother and his delightful wife.

The princess thought for a moment, smiling pensively, so that her face, lit up by her radiant eyes, was totally transformed, then suddenly, getting up and walking with ungainly steps across to the desk, she took out a sheet of paper and her hand began moving across it rapidly. This is what she wrote in reply:

Chère et excellente amie. Your letter of the 13th brought me great joy. You still love me, my poetic Julie. The separation, concerning which you speak so very badly, has clearly not had its usual effect on you. You complain of separation, but what then should I say, if I but dared – I, who am deprived of all those who are dear to me? Ah, if we did not have religion to console us, life would indeed be dismal. Why do you attribute such a strict view to me when you speak of your weakness for a young man? In that regard I am strict only with myself. I know myself sufficiently well to understand completely that, without making myself ridiculous, I cannot experience those feelings of love which seem so sweet to you. I understand these feelings in others and although, never having experienced them, I cannot approve, neither do I condemn them. It only seems to me that Christian love, love for one’s neighbour, love for one’s enemies, is more worthy, sweeter and finer than those feelings which can be inspired by the beautiful eyes of a young man in a poetic and loving young girl such as you.