War and Peace: Original Version

News of the death of Count Bezukhov reached us before your letter and my father was very affected by it. He said he was the penultimate representative of a great age, and that now it was his turn, but he would do everything in his power to ensure that his turn came as late as possible. May God preserve us from that misfortune.

I cannot share your opinion of Pierre, whom I knew as a child. It seemed to me that he always had a beautiful heart, and that is the quality which I value most highly in people. As for his inheritance and the role that was played in it by Prince Vasily, it is all very sad for both of them. Ah, my dear friend, the words of our dear Saviour that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven – those words are terribly just. I pity Prince Vasily, and Pierre even more. That such a young man should be burdened with such a huge fortune – the number of temptations that he will have to endure! If I were asked what I desire above all else in the world, then I desire to be poorer than the poorest of beggars. I thank you a thousand times, my dear friend, for the book you have sent me, and which is creating such a stir in Moscow. However, since you tell me that among the many good things it contains there are some that the feeble human intellect cannot fathom, it seems to me superfluous to engage in incomprehensible reading, which for that very reason could not be of any benefit. I have never been able to understand the passion that certain individuals have for confusing their own thoughts by their attachment to mystical books which merely provoke doubts in their minds, and inflame their imaginations, lending them an exaggerated character entirely contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the Apostles and the Gospel. Let us not attempt to fathom the mystical content of these books, for how can we, pitiful sinners, know the terrible and sacred mysteries of Providence while we are still prisoners of the fleshly integument that erects an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let us rather limit ourselves to the study of the great laws which our Heavenly Saviour left to us for our guidance here on earth, let us try to follow them and try to realise that the less we allow our intellect to roam at will, the more pleasing we shall be to God, who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him, and that the less we delve into that which He has preferred to conceal from us, the sooner He will grant us this revelation through his own divine reason.

My father has said nothing to me about a bridegroom, he has said only that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince Vasily; as far as marriage plans involving myself are concerned, I must tell you, my dear, inestimable friend, that in my opinion marriage is a divine institution to which one should submit. No matter how hard it might be for me, if it should please the Almighty to impose on me the obligations of a wife and a mother, I shall endeavour to fulfil them as faithfully as I can, with no concern for the study of my own feelings regarding the one whom He shall give me for a husband.

I have received a letter from my brother which notifies me of his arrival in Bleak Hills, together with his wife. This joy will be short-lived, since he is leaving us in order to take part in this war, into which we have been drawn, God only knows how or why. The echoes of war are not only heard where you are, at the centre of affairs and society, they are heard and make themselves painfully felt here too, among the agrarian labours and peace and quiet that townspeople usually imagine in the country. My father talks of nothing but campaigns and marches, of which I understand nothing, and two days ago, as I was taking my usual stroll along the village street, I saw a heart-rending scene. It was a party of recruits, enlisted from among our peasants, being sent to the army. If you could have seen the state of the mothers, wives and children of those who were leaving, and heard the sobbing and wailing on both sides. Well might one think that humanity has forgotten the laws of its Heavenly Saviour, who taught us love and forgiveness, and that it believes the greatest virtue lies in the art of killing others.

Goodbye, my dear, kind friend. May our Heavenly Saviour and his most Holy Mother preserve and keep you under their holy and mighty protection.

Marya.

“Ah, you send your letter, princess, I have already sent mine. I wrote to my poor mother,” the ever-smiling Mademoiselle Bourienne said in her rapid and pleasant voice, burring her r’s and introducing an entirely different, frivolously cheerful and complacent world into the aura of bleak, introspective melancholy surrounding Princess Marya.

“I must warn you, princess,” she added, lowering her voice, “that the prince has quarrelled with Mikhail Ivanovich.” Burring her r’s with especial vigour and listening to herself with pleasure, she said, “He is very much out of sorts, so gloomy. I warn you, you know …”

“Oh, no, no,” replied Princess Marya. “I asked you never to tell me what mood my father is in. I do not permit myself to judge him, and I would not wish others to judge him either.”

The princess glanced at the clock and, noticing that she had already missed five minutes of the time that she should have been using to play the clavichord, she set off with a frightened air to the sitting room. Between twelve and two o’clock, in accordance with the established daily routine, the prince rested and the princess played the clavichord.

XXXIV

The grey-haired valet was dozing in his chair, listening to the count snoring in the huge study. From behind closed doors at the far side of the house, came the sounds of difficult passages, repeated for the twentieth time, in a sonata by Dussek.

At this moment a carriage and a britzka drove up to the porch and Prince Andrei got out of the carriage, helping his little wife out politely but coldly, as always, and letting her go ahead of him. Grey-haired Tikhon, wearing a wig, stuck his head out of the door of the footman’s room, announced in a whisper that the prince was resting and hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the arrival of the son of the house nor any other unusual events could be allowed to disrupt the daily routine. Prince Andrei clearly knew this quite as well as Tikhon; he looked at his watch, as if to check whether his father’s habits had changed since the last time he had seen him and, having ascertained that they had not, he addressed his wife.

“He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go through to Princess Marya,” he said.

The little princess had changed in the time that had elapsed. The bulge of her waist had become significantly larger, she bent further backwards now and had become extremely fat, but her eyes were still bright and her short, smiling lip with the faint moustache lifted just as merrily and endearingly when she spoke.

“But this is a palace!” she said to her husband, looking around with the expression worn by people offering praise to the host at a ball.

“Let’s go, come on, come on.”

Looking around, she smiled at Tikhon and her husband and the footman showing them the way.

“Is that Marie playing? Quiet, let us take her by surprise.”

Prince Andrei followed her with a courteous, sad expression.

“You have grown old, Tikhon,” he said as he walked past the old man, who kissed his hand, which he wiped with a fine lawn handkerchief.

Just before the room from which they could hear the sound of the clavichord, a pretty blonde Frenchwoman skipped out of a side door. Mademoiselle Bourienne seemed quite beside herself with delight.

“Ah, what a joy for the princess,” she said to them. “At last, I must let her know.”

“No, no, please … You are Mademoiselle Bourienne; I am already acquainted with you from the friendship that my sister-in-law feels for you,” said the little princess, kissing the Frenchwoman. “She is not expecting us.”

They approached the door of the divan room, from behind which they could hear the same passage being repeated over and over again. Prince Andrei stopped and frowned, as though in anticipation of something unpleasant.

Princess Lise went in. The passage broke off in the middle, there was a cry, Princess Marya’s heavy footsteps and the sounds of kissing and muffled voices. When Prince Andrei went in, his wife and his sister, who had only seen each other once for a short time during Prince Andrei’s wedding, were clasped tightly in each other’s arms, still pressing their lips to the same spots which they had found in that first moment. Mademoiselle Bourienne was standing beside them, pressing her hands to her heart and smiling devoutly, obviously equally prepared either to burst into tears or burst out laughing. Prince Andrei shrugged and frowned, in the way that lovers of music frown when they hear a false note. The two women released each other and then once again, as though afraid of missing their chance, they grabbed each other by the hands, began kissing each other’s hands and pulling their own away, and then again began kissing each other on the face and then, to Prince Andrei’s absolute astonishment, they both burst into tears and started hugging and kissing each other again. Mademoiselle Bourienne burst into tears too. Prince Andrei obviously felt awkward and embarrassed, but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should be crying, they seemed never to have imagined that this meeting could have taken place in any other way.

“Ah, my dear! Ah, Marie.” Both women suddenly started talking at once and burst into laughter. “I had a dream …” – “So you were not expecting us? Ah, Marie, you have grown so thin …” – “And you have put on so much weight …”

“I recognised the princess immediately,” interjected Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“And I never even suspected,” exclaimed Princess Marya. “Ah, Andrei, I didn’t even see you there.”

Prince Andrei and his sister kissed, hand in hand, and he told her that she was the same old cry-baby that she always used to be. Through her tears, Princess Marya turned on her brother the warm, loving, gentle gaze of her large, radiant eyes, so lovely at that moment that his sister, always so plain, seemed beautiful to him. But that very instant she turned back to her sister-in-law and began squeezing her hand without speaking. Princess Lise spoke incessantly. Every now and then her short upper lip with the light moustache flew down for an instant, touched the right spot on the rosy-pink lower lip and then once again her smile was revealed in a bright gleam of teeth and eyes. She related an incident that had happened to them on Mtsensk Mountain, which could have proved dangerous in her condition, and then immediately announced that she had left all her dresses behind in St. Petersburg and God only knew what she would wear here, and that Andrei had changed completely, and that Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a perfectly serious suitor for Princess Marya, but they would talk about that later. Princess Marya was still staring silently at her brother’s wife and her lovely eyes were filled with both love and sadness, as if she pitied this young woman but could not express to her the reason for her pity. She was clearly caught up in her own train of thought now, independently of what her sister-in-law was saying. In the middle of Lise’s account of the latest festivities in St. Petersburg, Princess Marya turned to her brother.

“And are you definitely going to the war, Andrei?” she said with a sigh.

Lise sighed too.

“Tomorrow, in fact,” Marya’s brother replied.

“He is abandoning me here, and God only knows why, when he could have had a promotion …” Princess Marya did not hear her out and, still following the thread of her own thought, she indicated her sister-in-law’s belly with an affectionate glance and asked: “Will it be soon now?”

The little princess’s face changed. She sighed.

“Two months,” she said.

“And you are not afraid?” asked Princess Marya, kissing her again. Prince Andrei winced at this question. Lise’s lip moved down. She moved her face close to her sister-in-law’s and suddenly burst into tears again.

“She needs to rest,” said Prince Andrei. “Don’t you, Lise? Take her to your room, and I shall go to father. How is he, still the same?”

“The same, the very same, I do not know how you will find him,” the princess replied happily.

“The same routine, and the walks along the avenues? The lathe?” asked Prince Andrei with a barely perceptible smile, indicating that, much as he loved and respected his father, he understood his weaknesses.

“The same routine, and the lathe, and still mathematics and my geometry lessons,” Princess Marya replied happily, as though her lessons in geometry were one of the most joyful memories of her life.

XXXV

When the twenty minutes remaining until the time for the old prince to rise had elapsed, Tikhon came to announce the young prince to his father. The old man made an exception to his regular habits in honour of his son’s arrival: he ordered him to be admitted while he was dressing for dinner. The prince dressed in the old style, in a kaftan with powdered hair. As Prince Andrei entered his father’s apartments – not with the peevish expression and manners that he affected in society drawing rooms, but with the animated face that he wore when he was talking with Pierre – the old man was sitting in his dressing room on a broad armchair upholstered in morocco leather, wearing a dressing gown and presenting his head to Tikhon’s hands.

“Ah! The soldier! So you want to conquer Bonaparte?”

That was how the old man greeted his son. He shook his powdered head, as far as the plait being woven by Tikhon’s hands would allow it.

“Make sure you set about him well, or he’ll soon be listing us among his subjects. Greetings.” And he proffered his cheek.

The old man was in a good mood following his nap before dinner. (He said that sleep after dinner was silver, but sleep before dinner was golden.) He peered happily at his son from under his thick, beetling brows. Prince Andrei approached his father and kissed him on the spot he indicated. He did not respond to his father’s favourite topic of conversation – poking fun at modern military men, and especially at Bonaparte.

“Yes, I have come to see you, father, and with a pregnant wife,” said Prince Andrei, following the movement of every feature of his father’s face with eager eyes full of respect. “How is your health?”

“The only people who are unwell, brother, are fools and profligates, and you know me, busy from morning till night, abstemious, so I am well.”

“Thank God,” said his son, smiling.