^OFCAIIFO% ,^WE•UNIVERy/A ^lOSANCfL% ^ILIBRARY(7/ .aOSANCElfj-y. ^tllBRARYQr ^(^OJ!]V}JO^ ^i!/0JllV3JO'^ ,ofCAllFO% iUivnmV ^6/Abvaan^'^ ^UIBRARYQr "^^OillVJJO AWMlNIVERi, «^ — lOSANCflfj -. I (j 1 1^^ il30NYS01^ "^/^aaAINHJWV^ ,OFCALIF0ff4 vavaaii-iv^"^ AEUNIVERl lOSANCElfj-^ f\'Hnn;\'^ )FCAIIF(%^ Ayvaaiv# ^^V\EUNlVERS/4 \lOSANCElfj> ^lOSANC[lfj;> '^/iaaAiNn-BWV^ WAR AND PEACE A HISTORICAL NOVEL I 7 rK BY « COUNT LEON TOLSTOI TKANSLA ll-.D IXTO FRENCH BY A RUSSIAN LADY AND FROM THE French by CLARA BELL BEFOR E TILSIT 1805 — 1807 TWO VOLUMES VOL. L 5 REVISED AND CORRECTED IN THE UNITED STATES NEW YORK WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER I I MURRAY STREET q 9 '."^* 1 1887 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885 BY William S. Gottsberger in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasliington THIS TRANSLATION WAS MADE EXPRESSLY FOR THE PUBLISHER ^' fc; (^.^ i AVAR AND PEACE BEFORE TILSIT. 1805 — 1807. ^ CHAPTER I. "Well, Prince, what did I tell you? Genoa and Lucca have become the property of the Bonapartes. Now, T give you fair warning, you will forfeit your ivosition as my friend — as my faithful slave, as you choose to say — if you persist in disbelieving in war and are still determined to defend all the horrors and atrojD- ities perpetrated by this Antichrist — for that he is Antichrist I am convinced ! — Well, well, and now you are my dear friend ? I see I have quite frightened you. Come, sit down and chat." Tiie time was July 1805, the place St. Petersburg, and the speaker Anna Paulovna -Scherer, maid of honor to her majesty the Empress-dowager of the Russias, and one of the more intimate court circle. Her words were addressed tQ Prince Basil , a perspnage of official gravity, and the first to arrive at her soiree. Made- F^/. /. I 2 WAR AND PEACE. moiselle Scherer had been coughing for some few days : it was the influenza — a grippe she called it, {grippe being at that time a new and fashionable word.) A footman in red livery — the court livery — had been round the town that morning, carrying a number of notes each saying in the same terms, and in French: " If you have nothing better to do this evening M. le Comte, or M. le Prince, and are not too . much alarmed at the prospect of spending it with a hapless invalid, I shall be delighted to see you between seven^ and eight. ^ " Anna Scherer." " Mercy on us what a terrible attack !" said the .prince, not in the least upset by this reception. He wore a court uniform embroidered with gold and spark- ling with orders, silk stockings, and buckled shoes; his flat face wore an affable smile; he spoke French — th.'xt elaborate French which to the Russians of a generation or two back was the language even of their thoughts — and his voice had the deliberate and patronizing tones of a man influential at court and grown old in its a'c- mosphere. He came up to Anna Paulovna, and kissed her hand, bending his bald and perfumed head over it: then he seated himself comfortably on the sofa. " First of all let me entreat you to give me good news of your health," he said in a gallant tone which nevertheless betrayed a shade of irony, not to say of indifference, under the formalities of politeness. WAR^ND PEACE. 3 " How can I be well when my spirits are so ill at ease? Every feeling soul must suffer in these days — but you have come to spend the evening I hope ?" "No, I regret to say. It is Wednesday; the En- glish ambassador is giving a great ball and I must show myself there. My daughter is coming to fetch me." " I fancied the party had bee^i put off, and I must confess that all these entertainments and fireworks are beginning to bore me dreadfully." " If only your wish had been known the reception would of course have been put off," replied the prince mechanically, as if he were a well-regulated watch, and without the smallest expectation of being supposed to be in earnest. " Come now, do not tease me ; and tell me, for you know everything, what is setded about the despatch from Novosiltzow ?" " What can I tell you ?" said the prince, lookhig weary and bored. " You insist on knowing what they have concluded? Well, they have concluded that Bonaparte has burnt his^ ^hips, and we, it would seem, are about to do the same." Prince Basil always talked with cool indifference, like an actor rehearsing an old part. Mademoiselle Scherer, on the contrary, affected extreme sprightliness in spite of her forty years. She had made a social reputation for enthusiasm and slie sometimes worked herself up without any sense of excitement, simply in order not to disappoint her acquaintance. The half-suppressed smile that her face always wore was, to be sure, a little 4 WAR AND PEACE. out of keeping with her worn features, but it expressed her consciousness of an amiable weakness which, Uke a spoiled child, she could not or would not correct. The tone of this political dialogue had thoroughly provoked Anna Paulo vn a. " Oh ! do not talk to me about Austria. Of course I may know nothing about it, but I don't believe Aus- tria wants, or ever has wanted war! She is betraying us, and Russia will have to deliver Europe single-hand- ed ! Our benefactor fully realizes his glorious mission, and he will prove equal to it. I believe it, I cling to it with all my soul ! A splendid part lies before our good, kind, generous sovereign, and God will not abandon him ! He will fulfil his mission and crush the Hydra of revolution which is more hideous than ever, if pos- sible, under the mask of this monster, this assassin ! It will be our fate to ransom the blood of the righteous ! Whom can we trust, I ask you ? England is too mer- cantile to understand the magnanimous soul of Alex- ander! She has refused to surrender Malta. Shp is waiting and looking for some selfish motive behind our actions. What did they say to Novosiltzow ? Noth- ing. — No, no; they do not understand the devotion of the emperor, who wants nothing for himself and cares only for the public good. — What have they prom- ised? Nothing — and their promises are worth noth- ing. Has not Prussia declared that Bonaparte is invincible and that Europe is helpless to fight him ! I ^o not believe in Hardenberg — no, nor in Haugwitz. i'our famous Prussian neutrality is nothing but a snare. M'AR AND PEACE. 5 But I trust in God and in the high standing of our beloved emperor — the saviour of Europe!" She suddenly broke off smiling blandly at her own excitement. " What a pity that you are not in Wintzingerode's place. Your eloquence would have taken the king of Prussia's consent by storm; but — will you give me some tea ?" ^ " Directly. — By the way," she added more calmly, *' I expect two very interesting men this evening : the Vicomte de Mprtemart who is connected through the Rohans with the Montmorencys — one of the best families in France; he is one of the best of the emi- grants, and genuine. The other is the Abbe Morio , one of the deepest thinkers. — The emperor, you know, received him. ..." "I shall be delighted! — But tell me," he went on with greater indifference than ever, as though the ques- tion on his lips had but this instant occurred to him, while it was in fact the chief object of his visit. " Is it true that her majesty the Empress-dowager has asked for the appointment of Baron Founcke to be first secretary at Vienna. The baron strikes me as quite second-rate !" Prince Basil coveted the appointment for his son, and efforts were being made to obtain it for Baron Founcke through the influence of the Empress Maria F6odorovna. Anna Paulovna's eyelids drooped till they were almost closed, to convey that neither she nor anyone else could know what would or would no<- please the empress. -. WAR AND PEACE. the introduction, and then withdrew to bring up some one else. Everyone had to go through the same ceremony with this obscure and quite useless old lady, for whom no one cared a straw, while Anna Paulovna listened approvingly to their exchange of civilities with a half-solemn half-melancholy look. The aunt always repeated the same formula, asking after her visitor's health, reporting on her own and on that of her Ma- jesty the Empress-dowager, " which was better thank God." The victim politely tried to betray no undue haste to escape, but took good care not to come near the old lady again during the rest of the evening. Princess Bolkonsky had brought some needlework in a little velvet work-bag embroidered with gold. Her upper-lip — a bewitching little lip, shaded with the faintest trace of down — could never be persuaded to close on her lower lip ; but this little defect, which was quite original and peculiar, this half-open mouth, only made her more charming — a gift which is the exclusive privilege of a perfectly fascinating woman. Every one admired the young creature so full of life and health, and so graciously happy. All men, whether young and bored or old and morose, after a few words of conversa- tion with her felt as though they had caught some of her charm, or at any rate had made themselves parti- cularly agreeable, so infectious was the bright smile which showed her pearly teeth as she spoke. The little princess made her way round the table with short tripping steps; then, shaking out the folds of her dress, she sank into the sofa close to the samovar^ WAR AND PEACE. with the air of a person whose only aim in lix^-____^ please herself and others. " I brought my work," she said, opening her bag and addressing the circle generally. " Annette, I hope you are not going to play me false; you wrote 'to meet a few friends,' so you see . . . " and she held up her arms to display an elegant grey morning-dress trimmed with lace and fastened round the waist with a broad belt. " Do not let that trouble you, Lisa, you will always be the prettiest whatever you wear." ''And do you know," Lisa went on in just the same tone, but turning to a general officer, " that my husband is going to desert me ? He is going to get himself killed ! What is the good of this horrible war ?" she added to Prince Basil. But she did not wait for an answer and went on talking to his daughter Helen. " What a sweet little person it is !" said Prince Basil in a low voice to the mistress of the house. A few minutes after a tall and burly young man with a closely-cropped head was shown in. He wore spectacles and was dressed in light-colored trousers of fashionable cut, a brown coat and an immense shirt-frill. This was the natural son of Count Besoukhow, a fine gentleman of some notoriety in the days of the Em- press Catherine, and who, at this time was ill — dying slowly — at Moscow. The young gentleman had as yet taken up no particular career, and had but lately returned from abroad where he had been educated; this was his first appearance in St. Petersburg society. Anna Paulovna received him with the degree of WAR AND PEACE. civility and warmth which she bestowed on her least important guests ; nevertheless, and in spite of this very second-rate greeting — as she looked at Pierre, a look of anxiety and alarm crossed her face : an expression of the feeUng we experience in seeing some colossal object quite out of place. Pierre was, no doubt, much taller than any other man in the room; but Anna Paulovna's feeling had another source ; it was his shy but candid glance, at once keen and true, that startled his hostess, and distinguished him from the rest of her guests. " It is more than kind of you. Monsieur Pierre, to come to see a poor invalid," she said glancing uneasily at her aunt as she introduced him to the old lady. Pierre muttered some incoherent reply while his eyes wandered round the room. Suddenly a bright smile lighted up his face, he nodded to the little prin- cess as if they were the best friends, and bowed abruptly to ' ma tafite' Indeed, Anna Paulovna had cause for her alarms, for he turned on his heel and left the aunt without even waiting for the end of her speech about the empress' health. His hostess stopped him. " Do you know the Abbe Morio ?" she asked. ^' He is a very interesting man." " Yes, I have heard of his schemes for a perennial peace; it is very clever — but hardly practical." " Do you think so ?" said Anna Paulovna vaguely. And Pierre was guilty of a second blunder: he had quitted one lady before she could finish her sentence, and now he detained another who was wanting to be WAR AND PEACE. rid of him, bending over her, with his big feet appar- ently rooted to the floor, while he proceeded to explain why the Abbe Morio's dreams were Utopian. " We will discuss it another time," said Mile, Sch er e r,sm-iferg-.'"' Having shaken off this young man who had no manners, she resumed her duties — listening, looking on, ready at any moment to strengthen a weak point and give fresh impetus to a flagging conversation. She worked like the overseer of a spinning-mill, who walks up and down among the machinery noting every spindle that has stopped, or creaks, or rattles, and hastening to ease it or to stop it. Anna Scherer moved about her drawing-room, going first to a silent circle, and then to a group of eager gossips : a word, or a skilful shifting of the figures, gave a fresh start to the talking-machine which then went on again at an even and easy pace. But her doubt and dread of Pierre were perceptible through it all ; she kept her eye upon him and saw him first go to listen to what was going on round Mortemart, and then join the circle of which Morio was the centre. Pierre himself, a total stranger, was going through his first experience of St. Petersburg society ; he knew that all the intellect of the capital was assembled here and he wandered wide-eyed from one group to another, like a child in a toy-shop, so fear- ful was he lest he should miss something in the conver- sation that bore the hall-mark of talent. As he looked at all these faces, stamped with distinction and self-con- fidence, he expected every word to be profound or 14 WAR AND PEACE. witty. The abbe's conversation finally attracted him and he paused, awaiting an opportunity for giving his opinion. It is the weakness of all young people. Anna Paulovna's soiree was fairly started — all the spindles were twirling. Excepting " 7na tante^' who was sitting apart with another old lady with a tear- w^orn face that looked rather out of place in this gay circle, the company had fallen into three groups. The abbe was the centre of one, composed chiefly of men ; the second, young men for tlie most part, had gathered round the splendidly-beautiful Helen and the fascinat- ing little Princess Bolkonsky — who was so fresh and pretty, though rather too fat; the third had formed round Mortemart and Mile. Scherer. The viscount, who had a gentle face and pleasing manner, wore the mien of a celebrity, but he mod- estly left it to the company to do the honors of his person. Anna Paulovna took every advantage of this, with the air of a maitre iV hotel who recommends a dish as particularly choice and elegant w^hich, cooked by a less skilful hand, would have proved uneatable ; she had served up the viscount first to her guests, to be fol- lowed by the abbe — two refined and delicate morsels. Round Mortemart the conversation turned on the death of the Duke d'Enghien. The viscount main- tained that the duke had died a victim to his own mag- nanimity, and that Bonaparte had a private and personal spite against him. ''Indeed — tell us all about it!" cried Anna Paul- ovna. WAR AND PEACE. Mortemart smiled and bowed assent; Anna bid her company come to listen. "The viscount," she whispered to her neighbor, " knew the duke intimately ; the viscount," she repeated, turning to another, "tells a story delightfully; the vis- count," she added, to a third, " has moved in the best society, that is evident at a glance." And this was how the viscount was handed round and offered to the company as a rare treat, in the most graceful and tempting manner; he smiled consciously as he began his story. " Come and sit down here, my dear Helen," said Anna to the fair girl who formed the centre of the other circle. Princess Heleii rose, her face still lighted up by the smile it had worn ever since she came in, and which was the natural adjunct of her unrivalled beauty. As she moved across the room, her white dress with its garlands of ivy and wild flowers lightly sweeping past the men who made way for her, she was a radiant vision of sparkling gems, sliming hair and glistening shoulders — the living symbol of festivity. She did not look at any one but smiled on all, vouchsafing to them, as it were, the privilege of gazing at her splendid figure, and the dazzling fairness of her shoulders and throat fully displayed by her fashionably low dress. Helen was so surprisingly lovely that slie could not have a grain of petty vanity ; if she had felt awkwardly con- scious of such perfect and triumphant beauty and had wished to mitigate its effect she could not have done it. *' What a beautiful creature !" was on every lip. The WAR AND PEACE. viscount's eyes fell, as if some supernatural vision had struck his sight, when Helen took a seat near him and turned on him the charms of that perpetual smile. " I feel quite shy," he said, " before such an au- dience." Helen, leaning her pretty arm on the table, did not think it necessary to answer; she only smiled and waited. All the while the narrator was speaking she sat upright looking sometimes at her dimpled hand, or at her white bosom, adjusting her diamond necklace, pat- ting the skirt of her dress, and turning at the more ex- citing parts to look at her hostess, whose expression she would for a moment copy and then relapse into that placid smile. The litUe princess had come forward, too, from the tea-table. "Wait a moment," she exclaimed, "till I get out my work. — Well, what are you about — what are you thinking of?" she added to Hippolyte. " Give me my bag, please." Laughing and talking she made a general stir in the room. " There, now I am quite comfortable," she added, seating herself and taking her bag from Prince Hippo- lyte wlio drew a chair to her side and sat down. The young prince — le charmant Hippolyte as he was called — was strikingly like his sister, though she was " fLiir beyond compare " and he was decidedly ugly. Their features were alike ; but in her they were trans- figured by that perennial, brilliantly-youthful and self- WAR AND PEACE. ^» \ satisfied smile, and by tlie classical proportions of her whole face and figure; while he looked almost idiotic and always sulky, his frame was feeble and unhealthy, his eyes, nose, mouth all lost their individuality in a sour and bored expression, while his hands and feet were never still, but twisted into impossible attitudes. " Is it a ghost-story ?" he added, sticking his glass in his eye, as if that would help him to express himself. " Nothing of the sort," replied the viscount quite taken aback. "Oh! — only I hate them," said Hippolyte; and it was clear from liis manner that it was not till after he had spoken that he understood the full meaning of his words. Still, he had such complete assurance that it was always hard to tell whether he was clumsy or witty. He wore a dark-green frock-coat and inexpressibles of a pinkish-drab color — ^^ chair (h ?iymphe cniiie'^ as he called it: "maiden's blush" to translate it freely — with stockings and buckled shoes. The viscount told his story with much grace. The Duke d'Enghien, it was said, had come secretly to Paris to see Mile. Georges, and had there met Na- poleon, on whom the great actress also bestowed her favors. The consequence of this unlucky accident was one of those long fainting-fits to which Bonaparte was subject, and which put him ^ the power of the enemy. The duke had taken no advantage of his position, and Bonaparte had revenged himself for this magnanimous behavior by having the duke assassinated. The story was dramatic, and particularly exciting at the Vol. I. a 10 WAR AND PEACE. point where the rivals met. The ladies were much moved. '' It is delightful !" said Anna Paulovna, trying to read the little princess' eyes. " Quite charming !" said the little princess, taking up her work with renewed energy, to show that the in- terest of the narrative had made her forget it. Mortemart fully appreciated the implied compliment and w^as going on with his story, when Anna Paulovna, i\^ho had kept one eye on Pierre, perceived that he and the abbe were engaged in a sharp skirmish and flew to avert mischief. Pierre had succeeded in getting the abbe into conversation on the subject of the balance of powder, and the abbe, evidently enchanted by his listen- er's ingenuous ardor, was dilating at full length on his cherished scheme; both were talking loud with eager enthusiasm, and this had jarred on the maid of honor. " By what means ? Why by the balance of power in Europe and the rights of men," the abbe was saying. *' A single empire, as powerful as Russia, w^th a repu- tation for barbarism, frankly setting herself at the head of an alliance with the avowed purpose of maintaining that balance, — and the world would be saved!" " But how^ w^ill you establish that balance ?" per- sisted Pierre at the very moment when his hostess, with a look of stern repfoof at him, asked the Italian how he bore the northern climate. The abbe's face changed at once ; he put on the softened and affected expression which he commonly wore w^hen addressing a W'Oman. " I am too keenly alive to the charms of w^it and WAR AND PEACE. culture, especially among the women of the society into which I have the honor of being admitted, to have liad time to think of the climate," he said, while Mile. Scherer manoeuvred to draw him and Pierre into the general circle so as not to lose sight of them. -At this instant a new actor appeared on the scene ; this was Prince Andre Bolkonsky, the little princess* husband, a good-looking young man of middle height, with marked, hard features. Everything about him, from his weary eyes to his firm and measured step, was the very opposite of his wife, who was vivacious and bustling. He knew every one in the room and was bored to death by them all — nay, he would have given a handsome sum never to see or hear any one of them again, his wife included. She, indeed, seemed more antipathetic to him than any one, and he turned away from her with a grimace that disfigured his handsome features. He kissed Mile. Scherer's hand, and looked round at the company with a frown. " So you are preparing to fight, Prince ?" she said. " General Koutouzow is kind enough to wish to have me as his aide-de-camp," replied Bolkonsky. " And your wife ?" " She will go into the country." " I wonder you are not ashamed to deprive us of the fascinating little woman ?" " Andre," cried Lisa, just as coquettish with her husband as with every one else, " if only you had heard the pretty story the viscount has just been telling us about Mile. Georges and Bonaparte." :w it r xx» rmn upiir r%xr TMe «Pt tm WAM Ax: CHAPTER II- ■.2Ij1.k' aiwi T -ter.- nXit-i; - ^ A-r - - P c:.' ott of DO ; K ben^pod PriBoe, of mj Bons ? ^ ^T poor boy." W ar a Mxxd to tlie c - Gmd at TXMi, FriDoes. that I V agio i*e aie< ~ ▼ -e:t ^ eqncsrt: . . ^ .a ^ WAR AND PEACE. Prince Andr6 made a face again and turned away. Pierre, whose merry, kindly eyes had been watching him ever since his entrance, now came up to him and took his hand. The prince's frown did not vanish at the sight of the new-co^ier; but when, a moment later, he recognized the frank face, his own lighted up with a cordial smile. "Ah! you here, afloat on the tide of fashion!" " I knew I should meet you here. I will go home to supper with you if I may ?" He spoke low, not to interrupt Mortemart who was still speaking. " No, you may not, of course," said Andre laughing, and wringing his hand to show how unnecessary the question was. He was about to say more, when Prince Basil and his daughter rose and there was a little stir to make way for them. " Excuse our leaving you," said Prince Basil to the viscount, not allowing him to rise; "this tiresome ball at the English Embassy deprives us of a pleasure and compels us to interrupt you. I am so sorry, my dear Anna Paulovna, to be obliged to quit your delightful party." Helen made her way among the seats, holding up her gown with one hand and never ceasing to smile. Pierre gazed at her dazzling loveliness in a rapture mingled with awe. " She is very handsome," said Prince Andr^. " Yes," was all Pierre answered. . Prince Basil shook hands with him as he passed him. WAR AND PEACE. " Take that young bear in hand and finish his edu- cation," he said, turning to Mile. Scherer. " He has been in my house for months and this is the first time I have seen him in company. Nothing forms a young man like the society of clever women." CHAPTER II. The lady smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand, knowing that his father and Prince Basil were re- lated. The old lady, who had remained by the aunt, now started up and pursued Prince Basil into the ante- room. Her kind, worn face had lost the expression of attentive interest that she had assumed ; it betrayed anxiety and alarm. " And what can you tell me, Prince, of my Boris ? I cannot stay in St. Petersburg any longer. Tell me, I entreat you, what news I may take to my poor boy." In spite of Prince Basil's obvious displeasure and gross want of politeness in listening to her, she smiled in his face, and clung to his hand to detain him. ^' What effort would it cost you to say a word to the emperor ; and he would be admitted into the Guard at once." " I assure you, Princess, that I will do everything in my power, but there are difficulties in the way of my preferring such a request to his majesty. I advise you [6 WAR AND PEACE. Prince Andr6 made a face again and turned away. Pierre, whose merry, kindly eyes had been watching him ever since his entrance, now came up to him and took his hand. The prince's frown did not vanish at the sight of the new-co^er; but when, a moment later, he recognized the frank face, his own lighted up with a cordial smile. " Ah ! you here, afloat on the tide of fashion !" " I knew I should meet you here. I will go home to supper with you if I may ?" He spoke low, not to interrupt Mortemart who was still speaking. " No, you may not, of course," said Andre laughing, and wringing his hand to show how unnecessary the question was. He was about to say more, when Prince Basil and his daughter rose and there was a little stir to make way for them. " Excuse our leaving you," said Prince Basil to the viscount, not allowing him to rise; " this tiresome ball at the English Embassy deprives us of a pleasure and compels us to interrupt you. I am so sorry, my dear Anna Paulovna, to be obliged to quit your delightful party." Helen made her way among the seats, holding up her gown with one hand and never ceasing to smile. Pierre gazed at her dazzling loveliness in a rapture mingled with awe. " She is very handsome," said Prince Andre. " Yes," was all Pierre answered. Prince Basil shook hands with him as he passed him. WAR AND PEACE. " Take that young bear in hand and finish his edu- cation," he said, turning to Mile. Scherer. " He has been in my house for months and this is the first time I have seen him in company. Nothing forms a young man like the society of clever women." CHAPTER II. The lady smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand, knowing that his father and Prince Basil were re- lated. The old lady, who had remained by the aunt, now started up and pursued Prince Basil into the ante- room. Her kind, worn face had lost the expression of attentive interest that she had assumed; it betrayed anxiety and alarm. "And what can you tell me. Prince, of my Boris? I cannot stay in St. Petersburg any longer. Tell me, I entreat you, wliat news I may take to my poor boy." In spite of Prince Basil's obvious displeasure and gross want of politeness in listening to her, she smiled in his face, and clung to his hand to detain him. " What effort would it cost you to say a word to the emperor ; and he would be admitted into the Guard at once." " I assure you, Princess, that I will do everything in my power, but there are difficulties in the way of my preferring such a request to his majesty. I advise you 2 2 WAR AND PEACE. rather to get at Roumianzow through Galitzine. It would be more to the purpose." The old lady was a Princess Droubetzkoi — one of the oldest names in Russia, but she was poor, and hav- ing lived out of the world for years, had lost all her former connections. Slie had now come to St. Peters- burg solely with a view to gaining an appointment in the Imperial guard for her only son ; and it was in the hope of meeting Prince Basil that slie had accepted Mile. Scherer's invitation. Her face, which had once been handsome, betrayed some annoyance, but only for a moment ; then she smiled again and clasped Prince Basil's arm. " Listen, Prince," she said. " I have never asked you for anything before, and I will never ask you for anything again; I have never taken any advantage of the friendship which once bound you to my father. But now, for God's sake, do this for my boy and you will be our Providence. — Nay, do not be angry, l)ut just promise. I have asked GaHtzine and he refused. Be a dear good fellow, as you used to be," she added, trying to smile while her eyes were full of tears. " Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helen, who was waiting at the door, and she turned her lovely face on her father. Power is capital, and only to be used with economy. No one knew this better than Prince Basil : the surest way to get nothing for himself was to petition for all who applied to him — he had learnt that very early. Hence he rarely exerted his personal influence; but WAR AND PEACE. V:^: Princess Droubetzkoi's earnest prayers had stirred some faint remorse in the depths of his conscience. She had reminded him of the fact that it was to her father that he had owed his first introduction to a successful career. He had observed, too, that she was one of those women — of those mothers, who neither pause nor rest till the object of their desires is gained, and who, if the occasion requires it, are ready at any moment Avith fresh entreat- ies and recriminations. This last reflection turned the scale. '^ My dear Anna Mikhailovna," he said in his usual bored tone and with his habitual famiharity, " it is next to impossible to do what you want; however, I will try, in token of my regard for you and my respect for your father's memory. Your son shall enter the guard, I give you my word — now, are you satisfied ?" " My dear friend, you are my benefactor ! I ex- pected no less, for I know how good you are. — Stop, one word," she cried, seeing him about to go. " When he is appointed . . ." but she paused in some confusion. " You are on the best terms with Koutouzow I know — you will recommend Boris for the post of aide-de- camp ? Then I shall be quite happy and never again . . ." Prince Basil smiled. "That I cannot promise. Since Koutouzow was appointed to the chief command he has been stormed with applications. He told me himself that all the ladies in Moscow had offered him their sons as aides- de-camp." 24 WAR AND PEACE. " No, no ; you must promise — my friend, my pro- tector; promise, or I will not let you go." " Papa," said the fair Helen in the same tone, " we shall be late." " Good-bye — good-bye. You see — I cannot . . ." " Then you will speak to the emperor to-morrow ?" "Without fail; but as to Koutouzow I promise nothing." " My dear Basil," persisted Anna Mikhailovna with a coquettishly-persuasive smile, forgetting that these graces of a past date were now out of harmony with her worn features. She was not thinking of her age in- deed, and was merely, without a thought, falling back on every feminine resource. But as soon as the prince liad turned his back her face was cold and anxious again. vShe rejoined the circle who were still listening to tlie viscount, watching, now that her task was accom- l)lished, for a favorable moment for disappearing from the scene. " And what have you to say to the latest farce, the coronation at Milan ?" asked Mile. Scherer. " Witli the people of Genoa and Lucca coming to do homage to Monsieur Bonaparte. Monsieur Bonaparte seated on a throne and accepting the homage of Nations! It is delicious! It is enough to turn one's brain; the whole world must have gone mad together!' Prince Andr^ looked at her and smiled : " ' God has given it me, beware of touching it,* " he said; they were Napoleon's words as he set the WAR AND PEACE. crown on his head. " They say he looked splendid as he spoke," he added, and he repeated the words in Italian : " Dio mi la dona, guai a chi la toca.'" " I only hope," said Mile. Scherer, " that this will be the drop too much. Really and truly the sovereigns of Europe ought no longer to endure this man, who is a living threat to them all." ''The sovereigns!" echoed the viscount sadly, "I do not include Russia," he added politely. " The sovereigns of Europe ? What did they do for Louis XVI., for the Queen, for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing — and, be- lieve me, they are suffering now for having betrayed the cause of the Bourbons. The sovereigns ! Why they send ambassadors to present their compliments to the usurper !" And he shifted his attitude with an exclama- tion of contempt. Prince Hippolyte, who had not ceased gazing at Mortemart through his eye-glass, turned himself stiffly towards the little princess of whom he requested a needle with which he scratched the outline of the arms of the Conde family, and then he blazoned them with the utmost gravity, as if she had requested it: " A baton and bordure engrailed, gules on azure," he said. She listened placidly. " If Bonaparte remains a year longer on the throne of France," the viscount went on, like a man who is ac- customed to follow out his own train of thought without heeding the reflections of others on a familiar subject, " things will only go on in the same way. French so- 2 6 WAR AND PEACE. ciety — good society, I mean — will be utterly disinte- grated by intrigue, violence, exile, and sequestrations — and then . . ." He threw up his hands with a shrug. Pierre was about to speak, but his hostess, who was watching him, anticipated him. " The Emperor Alexander," she said with her usual tone of melancholy reverence, " has declared that he will leave it to the French to choose their own form of government, and I am fully convinced that the whole nation, when once they are delivered from the usurper, will throw themselves into the arms of the legitimate monarch." She was anxious, it will be seen, to flatter the royalist emigrant. "That is not very likely," said Prince Andr^. " The viscount is right in thinking that matters have gone very far and that it will be difficult to revert to the past." " I have heard," said Pierre, coming forward, '' that most of the nobles have gone over to Napoleon." "The Bonapartists may say so," replied the vis- count without looking at Pierre. " It is impossible to know what public opinion in France really is." " It was Napoleon, at any rate, who said it," re- plied Prince Andre satirically, for he did not like the viscount whose retorts were aimed at him. " ' I showed them the path to glory and they would not tread it ' — those are the words attributed to him — ' 1 opened my WAR AND PEACE. — 27^ ante-room and they rushed in in crowds.' — I do not know how far he had a right to say so." " He had none whatever," exclaimed Mortemart. " After the murder of the Duke d'Enghien the most en- thusiastic ceased to regard him as a hero; and if ever he had seemed one to certain people," he continued, addressing Anna Paulovna, " after that there was a martyr the more in heaven and a hero the less on earth." These last words had hardly been uttered, and re- warded with an approving smile, before Pierre rushed into the arena, without giving Mile. Scherer, who appre- hended something tremendous, time to prevent him. " The execution of the duke," he began, " was a political necessity, and Napoleon showed his magna- nimity by assuming the whole responsibility for the act." "Good Heavens! Good Heavens!" murmured Anna Paulovna in dismay. " What, M. Pierre, can you find any 'magnanimity* in a murder ?" said the little princess, shaking up her work. " Oh ! oh !" said several. " Capital !" said Prince Hippolyte, slapping his hand on his knee. The viscount merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked at them over his spectacles. " I say this," he went on, " because the Bourbons fled at the revolution, leaving the country a prey to an- archy. It was Napoleon who understood and quelled the revolution and that is why, when public order was 28 WAR AND PEACE. in danger, he could not pause to save the life of a single individual." "Will you come to the other table?" suggested Anna Paulovna. But Pierre, growing more excited, went on with his speech without heeding her. " Yes, Napoleon is great because he has risen supe- rior to the revolution, has remedied its abuses and pre- served what was good in it : the equaUty of good citizens, and liberty of the press and of speech — that is how he gained his power." " If he had restored the legtimate king to the throne, instead of taking advantage of his power to commit a murder, I should have called him a great man," said the viscount. " That was out of his power. The nation had given him the throne on purpose that he might rid her of the Bourbons ; she recognized him as a master-mind. The revolution was a great fact," continued Pierre, be- traying his extreme youthfulness by his persistency in trying to explain his views and uttering advanced and irritating ideas. " The Revolution and the Regicide ! After that ! — But will you not come to the other table ?" repeated the hostess. '' Le Contrat social ."' said Mortemart with a resigned smile. " I do not allude to the Regicide — I mean the idea." " The idea of robbery, of murder, and of regicide !" said an ironical voice. WAR AND PEACE. 29 " Those are the extremes ; but the real marrow of the idea is emancipation from prejudice and the equahty of men, and Napoleon maintained it in its integrity." •' Liberty and equality !" retorted the viscount scornfully, for he was bent on proving to the young man the weakness of his argument. " Those high- sounding words have already lost their value. Who would not love the reality ? The Saviour himself preached them ! — But have we been any happier since the revolution ? On the contrary. We asked for liberty ; Napoleon has confiscated it." Prince Andre stood smiling and looking first at Pierre and the viscount and then at the mistress of the house, who, with all her experience of the world, had been shocked and alarmed at Pierre's sallies; however, when she saw that these sacrilegious views did not make the Frenchman angry, and also that it was impossible to check them, she made common cause with the noble exile and, in her turn fell upon the orator. " But, my dear M. Pierre," she said, "how can you account for the conduct of a great man who has a duke — or the commonest man — put to death when the victim has committed no crime, and without even a trial ?" " And I should like, too, to ask you," said the vis- count, "to account for the i8th Brumaire. Was it not an act of treason, or rather of trickery, utterly unlike any impulse of a great man ?" " And the Turkish prisoners that were massacred 30 WAR AND PEACE. by his orders," cried the little princess. " It is perfectly- fearful !" " He is a low fellow, say what you will," Prince Hippolyte threw in. Pierre, having no answer ready, looked at them all and smiled — not a pinched, unmeaning smile, but a frank sincere smile which lent his usually stern and rather morose face an expression of kindly candor, like that of a child who pleads to be forgiven. The viscount, who had never seen him before, un- derstood at once that this Jacobin was less terrible than his words. There was a brief silence. " How is he to answer you all at once ?" said Prince Andre suddenly. " Is there no difference be- tween the actions of a private gentleman and a states- man — a general or a ruler ? To me, at any rate, there seems to be a great difference." " Why, certainly," said Pierre, delighted at this un- expected support. ■ " Napoleon on the bridge at Areola or giving his hand to his plague-stricken soldiers is great as a man, and it is impossible to refuse to recognize it; but there are other things, it is true, which can hardly be justi- fied," continued Prince Andre, who was evidently bent on making up for Pierre's blundering and who, as he spoke, rose, thus giving his wife a hint to take leave. Prince Hippolyte did the same, but with a wave of his hand seemed to beg the rest to remain seated. " By the way," he began eagerly, " I heard a de- lightful Russian story to-day — I really must tell it you. WAR AND PEACE. 31 Excuse me, Viscount, but I must tell it in Russian ; it would lose aft its point . . ." And he began his anec- dote in Russian with an aftectedly strong French accent; "At Moscow there lives a grand lady who is ex- tremely stingy and who wanted to drive with two tall footmen behind her carriage. Well, and this lady had a very tall waiting-maid — it was her whim . . ." At this point Prince Hippolyte stopped to think, as if he had some difficulty in going on with his story : " So she said to her — yes, she said to her: 'Girl — whatever her name was — dress up in livery and stand up behind the carriage, I am going to pay some calls.' " Here Prince Hippolyte burst out laughing, but un- luckily no one echoed his lauglUer and the story-teller seemed much damped by this failure. A few, however, managed to smile, among them the old lady and Mile. Scherer. " So they set out. But suddenl) die wind rose ; the girl's hat blew off and her long hair came down . . ." Then, unable to control himself any longer, he fell into such a fit of laughing as almost choked him. — " Yes, yes," he said, rolling in his seat, " all her hair came down, and the whole town knew it." This was the end of the story. No one could see the point of it or why it had to be told in Russian ; but Anna Paulovna and some others were grateful to the narrator for having so happily interrupted M. Pierre's unpleasant and tiresome harangues. The conversation .was diverted into more trivial channels — remarks on 32 WAR AND PEACE. balls past and to come, and on the theatres, with Mty questions as to when and where they might meet again. After this the company thanked their hostess for a delightful evening and withdrew in detachments. Pierre, besides being unusually tall, square-shoul- dered, and awkward, had, among other physical blem- ishes, very large red hands ; he had no idea of how to come into a room and still less of how to get out of it with a proper modicum of polite speeches. In his utter absence of mind, when he rose to leave he took up, instead of his own hat, the cocked and plumed hat of a general officer, which he stood twirling in his hands till the owner, in some alarm, succeeded in rescuing it. Still, it must be said, all this clumsiness and blundering were atoned for by his thorough good-nature, frankness, and modesty. Mile. Scherer bid him good-night with an air of forgiveness bestowed as became a Christian. " I hope," she said, " that I may have the pleasure of seeing you here again ; but I also hope that before then you will have amended your opinions." - He made no reply, but as he bowed, his honest, simple smile seemed to say : " Well, after all, an opinion is but an opinion, and you see I am a thorough good fellow." Which was so true that every one, including Mile. Scherer, felt it instinctively. Prince Andre had followed his wife and Hippolyte into the ante-room, where a footman was putting his cloak over his shoulders. " Go into the drawing-room, Annette," said the little WAR AND PEACE. 33 lady, " you will take cold ... It is quite understood !" she added in an undertone. Anna Paulo vna had found an opportunity for speaking to Lisa of the marriage she was scheming be- tween her sister-in-law and Anatole. " I rely on you," she replied, also in a whisper. " You will write her a line, and then you must let me know what her father thinks of it. Good-night . . ." And she disappeared. Prince Hippolyte came up to the princess, and leaning over her, stood chattering in her ear. Two men-servants — his carrying an officer's cloak, and hers holding a shawl — were waiting till they should have finished their tete-a-tete in French which the servants appeared to be listening to, though it was unintelligible to them — nay, and to understand without showing it. The little princess was talking, smiling, laughing, all in a breath. " I am so glad I did not go to the Enghsh Em- bassy," said Hippolyte. " It would have been such a bore, and we have had such a delightful evening. De- lightful, hasn't it been ?" " But they say it is to be a splendid ball," said the princess Avith a curl of that downy lip, " and all the pretty women in St. Petersburg are there." " Not all, since you are not," said the prince laugh- ing. Then, taking the shawl -out of the footman's hands and pushing him aside, he wrapped it round the princess. His hands fumbled with it for some little time round her throat, and he almost seemed to em- brace her — was it intentional or mere clumsiness? No Vol. J. 3 34 WAR AND PEACE. one could have decided. — She drew back a httle, still smiling, and looked up at her husband whose eyes were shut and who looked tired and half-asleep. " Are you ready ?" he said, with a side-glance at his wife. Prince Hippolyte hastily flung on his cloak, which being in the latest fashion fell below his heels, and stumbling and struggling with it he rushed forward to help the princess into her carriage. " All revoir, Princess," he said, his tongue as clumsy as Ijis feet. The princess picked up her dress and settled herself in the dark corner of the carriage ; her husband was taking up his sword. Prince Hippolyte, who seemed to be helping them, was only in the way. " I beg your pardon ..." said Prince Andre in a dry, sharp tone and in Russian, for Hippolyte stood in his path. " Now, Pierre, you will follow us," he added warmly. The postilion started and the carriage rolled clat- tering away. Hippolyte, standing on the step, giggled uncom- fortably ; he was waiting for the viscount whom he had promised to take home. " Well, my dear fellow, your little princess is very nice, very nice indeed," said Mortemart as he seated himself in the carriage, " very nice indeed ma foi /'' and he kissed the tips of his fingers. Hippolyte chuckled complacently. '• And you, do you know you are dangerous with your innocent ways ? I pity the poor husband — a little officer who gives himself as many airs as a sovereign prince." WAR AND PEACE. 35 Hippolyte went into fits of laughter. " And you said that Russian women were nowhere, as compared with French women ! " he sputtered. *' You must know how to take them, that is all." CHAPTER III. Pierre, having reached the house first, went straight into Prince Andre's private room as an intimate in the house ; he stretched himself on a sofa, as was his wont, and took up a book — it happened to be Caesuras Cotnmentaries — which he opened in the middle. *' What have you been doing at Mile. Scherer's ?" said Prince Andre. " You will really make her ill." He came in rubbing his hands which were small and white. Pierre turned over, all at once, making the sofa groan under his weight; and looking up at his friend with his bright, eager face, he said with an indifferent shrug : " That abbe is really a very interesting man only he has got hold of the wrong end of the matter ... I have not a doubt that a permanent peace is quite possible, but I cannot see my way to it; not by a balance of power at any rate . . ." Prince Andre, who did not look like a man to ^6 WAR AND PEACE. trouble himself about abstract questions, interrupted him : " My dear fellow, the thing that is absolutely im- possible is that we should everywhere and at all times say exactly what we think. Now, have you made up your mind ? will you be a horse-guardsman or a diplo- matist ?" " Would you believe that I really do not know yet. Neither prospect smiles upon me," said Pierre, sitting up on his heels on the divan like a Turk. " Still, you must come to some decision ; your father is waiting." Pierre had been sent abroad at the age of ten with an abbe for a tutor; he had remained absent till he was five-and-twenty. On his return his father had dismissed the abbe, and said to the young man : " Now, go to St. Petersburg, enquire for yourself and choose. I will agree to anything you wish. Here is a letter to Prince Basil, and here is money. Write to me and rely on my doing what I can for you." Since then for three months Pierre had been looking about him and doing nothing. He passed his hand over his forehead : " He must be a freemason ?" he said, alluding to the Italian abbe. "That is all nonsense," said Prince Andre. "I want to talk about your affairs. Did you go to see the mounted brigade?" " No, I did not go. But I thought over one thing which I meant to tell you. We are at war with Napo- leon ; if we were fighting for liberty I should be the first WAR AND PEACE. 37 to join, but when it means helping England and Aus- tria to crush the greatest man now living, I do not see my way to it." Prince Andre raised his shoulders at this childish sally; he scorned to answer it seriously, and only said-i " If we only fought for our convictions there would \ be an end of war." j " Nothing could be better," retorted Pierre. y " Possibly, but it will never come to pass," said Andre smiHng. " But come now, what are we going to war about?" " I have not the faintest idea. We must; and what is more I am going to the front . . ." he paused, " be- cause the life I lead here . . . does not suit me." The rustle of a dress was audible in the adjoining room. The sound seemed to bring Prince Andre to himself; he drew himself up and put on the expression his face had worn all the evening at Mile. Scherer's. Pierre shpped his feet off the couch. The princess came in ; she had changed the dress she had been wearing for a loose gown equally fresh and elegant; her husband rose and politely pushed forward an easy- chair. " I often wonder," she began, seating herself briskly, " why Annette never married. You are very foolish, you men, not to have asked her. Begging your pardon, you really know nothing about women. — What a wrangler you are, M. Pierre." " I might wrangle with your husband, too, for I cannot understand why he is going to fight," said 3© WAR AND PEACE. Pierre, addressing her without any sign of the embar- rassment which is sometimes perceptible in a young man with a young woman. She shuddered sHghtly ; Pierre's remark had touched her to the quick. " That is just what I tell him, too. I cannot con- ceive why men cannot live without fighting. Why do we wish for nothing, ask nothing — we women ? Now, I appeal to you. I am always telling him that his po- sition here as my uncle's aide-de-camp is all he could wish; every one knows him, every one values him. Only the other day at the Apraxines' I heard a lady say : * That is the famous Prince Andre ' — on my word she did." And she shouted with laughter. *' And it is the same wherever he goes ; he can be aide-de-camp to the emperor any day he pleases — for the emperor, you know, has spoken most graciously to him. We were talking it over just now, Annette and I — it would be so easy to manage. What do you think ?" Pierre looked at Andre, and seeing that his friend looked annoyed he made no reply. " When do you start ?" h'e asked. " Oh! do not talk of his starting; I will not hear a word about it !" exclaimed the princess, with that odd mixture of waywardness and light-heartedness that she had shown to Prince Hippolyte, and which was strangely discordant in the intimacy of home. " To-day, as I thought that I should have to break off all these dear connections — and besides — Andre," and she winked her eyes with a little shiver, " I am afraid." Her husband looked at her in a bewildered way, as WAR AND PEACE. 39 if he had only just become aware of her presence ; he answered her with cold politeness : " What are you afraid of, Lisa ? I do not under- stand." "How like a man! Selfish — they are all selfish! He has taken this fancy into his head so he deserts me, God knows why, and shuts me up all alone, in the country." " With my father and sister, remember." " It comes to the same thing ; I shall be alone, away from my own friends — and then he expects me to be satisfied !" She spoke petulantly and her short upper lip no longer gave her face a smiling expression but, on the contrary, a look that suggested some vicious little ro- dent. But she was silent, not liking to assign the real reason of her terrors before Pierre. " I cannot imagine what you have to fear," her hus- band went on, fixing his eyes on her. She colored, and with a little desperate shrug she exclaimed : " Andre, Andre, why are you so changed ?" "Your doctor tells you not to sit up late; you ought to go to bed." The princess made no. reply but her lips quivered; her husband rose and began to walk up and down the room. Pierre, frankly astonished, watched them alter- nately ; at last he was about to go, but he stopped. "What do I care whether M. Pierre is present or not," exclaimed Lisa, her face puckered up like that of a child just going to cry. " I have been meaning to 40 WAR AND PEACE. ask you for a long time, Andre, why you are quite dif- ferent to me from what you once were ? What harm have I done ? You are going off to the army ; you have no pity for me — why ?" " Lisa !" said Prince Andre. The word conveyed an entreaty, a threat, and a warning that she would presently regret her speech. But she went recklessly on': "You treat me Hke an idiot or a child. I can see ... it was not so six months ago !" " Lisa, be silent, I beg," said her husband raising his voice. Pierre, whose painful excitement had gradually in- creased during this dialogue, rose and went up to the young woman. He could not bear to see her tears and seemed almost ready to cry, too. " Be calm. Princess," he said. *' These are fancies — I know, I have felt the same kind of thing — and I assure you — excuse me, I am in the way, a stranger. But pray be calm. — Good-night." Prince Andre detained him. " No, stay; the princess is too kind to deprive me of the pleasure of an evening in your society." " Yes, he thinks of no one but himself," she mut- tered, unable to control her tears of vexation. " Lisa," repeated Prince Andre, his hard stern tonf showing plainly that his patience was wearing thin Suddenly her pretty little face — like that of a squirre in a rage — took a quite different expression ; the cowe doubtful look of a dog with its tail down wagging noiselessly on the floor. WAR AND PEACE. 4I '' Oh dear ! oh dear!" she sighed, with a sidelong scowl at her husband; then, gathering up her dress, she went up to him and kissed his forehead. " Good-night," he said, and he rose and kissed her hand as if she had been a stranger. The friends were silent ; neither of them could make up his mind to speak. Pierre stole a glance at Prince Andre who was rubbing his forehead slowly with his slim hand. " Come to supper," he said leading the way. They went into a splendid dining-room recently redecorated; the glass, plate, china, and damask all were unmistak- ably new — the sign of a recently-established house- hold. In the middle of supper Prince Andre put his elbows on the table, and began talking with a nervous irritability which was new to Pierre ; like a man who has had something on his mind for a long time, and has determined at last to make a clean breast of it. " My dear fellow, do not marry till you have done everything in life that you care to do, till you have ceased to love the woman you mean to marry, and have studied her thoroughly : if you do, you will make a fatal and irreparable mistake. Belter wait till you are old and good for nothing else ; then you will not run the risk of wasting everything good and noble in your soul. Yes, it all gets frittered away in small change ! — It is so, I assure you; you need not look so aston- ished. If you ever hoped and believed that you would do anything worth doing, you will feel at every turn that it is all at an end ; that every door is closed but 42 WAR AND PEACE. those into drawing-rooms where you elbow court toadies and idiots. — But what is the use . . . ?" He let his hand fall heavily on the table. Pierre took off his spectacles, and this, which com- pletely altered his face, revealed still more plainly his amiability and his astonishment. " My wife," Prince Andre went on, " is a good little wife, a woman in whose hands her husband's honor is perfectly safe. But what would I not give at this mo- ment. Great Heavens, not to be married ! You are the first and only soul to whom I have confessed it — for I love you." As he spoke Andre was less and less like the Prince Bolkonsky who had sat bolt upright in his chair at Mile. Scherer's, firing off short sentences in French, in a low tone and with his eyes half-shut. Every muscle of his thin, keen face quivered with feverish ex- citement, and his eyes, in which the fire seemed always dead, shone and sparkled vividly. It was easy to guess that he would be violent in his short bursts of morbid irritation in proportion to his habitual apathy and nervelessness. " You do not understand ! and yet it is the story of a whole life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," he went on, though Pierre had not breathed a syllable, '^ but Bonaparte while he toiled was making straight for his goal, step by step; he was free; he had but one -object in view and he gained it. But once tie yourself i;o a woman and you are chained like a galley-slave. Every impulse and aspiration, the very forces within WAR AND PEACE. 43 you, only crush you and fill you with regret. Drawing- room gossip, balls, vanities, meannesses — these are the charmed circle that fence you in. I am starting to help in this war — one of the most tremendous wars ever waged — and I know nothing, am fit for nothing. To make up for it I am most amiable, most satirical, at Mile. Scherer's they hang on my lips! — Then think of that dull society which my wife cannot bear to do without ! — If only you could know what all these fine ladies — nay, all women — are worth. My father is right: Egoism, vanity, folly, utter mediocrity — that is the essence of woman when she shows her real self. When you see tliem in the world you might fancy there was something better in them; but no — nothing, nothing ! My dear fellow, never marry . . . ." Prince Andre finished with these words. " But what, to me, seems strange," said Pierre, " is that you, of all men, should think yourself incapable and a failure, when the future is before you, and . . ." His very voice showed how highly he thought of his friend and how much he expected of him. " What right has he to talk so," thought Pierre, to whom Prince Andre was the type of perfection, pre- cisely because he felt that the prince possessed the quality which he himself most lacked : Force and Will. He had always admired the ease and equanimity of his friend's demeanor towards others in every rank of life, his wonderful memory^ his various knowledge — for he read or made note of everything — and his powers of work and study. And if Pierre had ever been struck 44 WAR AND PEACE. at finding in Andre no taste for speculative philosophy, which was his own particular weakness, he regarded it not as a deficiency but as a proof of strength. In all the relations of life, however intimate, friendly and simple, flattery and praise are as indispensable as the oil which greases a machine and makes it work. "I — I am done for; do not talk about me but about yourself," said the prince presently, smiUng at having hit on so happy a diversion. " About me ?" said Pierre, and his face reflected his friend's look in a broad, merry, boylike smile. " But there is nothing to be said about me. After all, what am I ? A bastard ! . . ." And he colored deeply, for it had been a great effort to bring out the word. " Without a name, without money, and — and yet free and happy, for the present at any rate. Only I may honestly con- fess that I do not know what I had better set to work to do, and I really want your advice on the subject." Andre looked at him with kindly benevolence, but it was a benevolence which betrayed a consciousness of superiority. " I have a great affection for you, because you are the only living soul in all our circle of acquaintance ; you are happy, you say — well, choose as you please ; the choice matters little. You will get on anywhere. — But I do beg you to break with the Kouraguines ; give up that side of your life; this debauched, devil-may- care existence does not in the least become you." " What is to be done, my dear fellow ?" said Pierre, WAR AND PEACE. 45 shrugging his shoulders, " the women, you know, the women !" " I do not admit it," said Andre. " Women of good breeding, yes — but not such women as take up with Kouraguine." Pierre was Hving with Prince Basil and led the same dissipated life as his youngest son Anatole — the very man who was to be married to Prince Andre's sister in the hope of reforming him. " Do you know," said Pierre, as if he had had a sudden inspiration, " I have been thinking of it seriously for a long time. It is owing to that sort of life that I am unable to think or decide on anything — that I have headaches, and no money. He asked me again this evening, but I will not go." " Give me your word of honor that you will give it up." " On my word, I will." ^ CHAPTER IV. It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a midsummer night — a northern night of lumi- nous twilight; he got into a hackney-carriage, firmly mtending to go home. But as he drove along he felt that sleep was out of the question in such a night as this^ which was more like the evening or dawn of a fine 6 WAR AND PEACE. day. He looked down the long perspective of the empty streets. Then he remembered that the club of gamblers were to meet to-night at AnatoleKouragiiine's; after cards they drank. '' Supposing I were to go ?" he said to himself, and then he remembered the promise he had just made to Prince Andre. At the same time such a wild desire came over him — as it does in men of no determination — to enjoy, just once more, that dissipated life which he knew only too well, that he made up his mind to go to Anatole's rooms, persuading himself that his word was not bind- ing, since he had promised Anatole one thing before he had promised Andre another ; that, take them for all in all, such pledges were merely conventional and had no definite meaning; that, after all, no one could be sure of to-morrow, or know whether some extraordinary ac- cident might not sweep honor and dishonor, with life, into the grave. This habit of arguing with himself often upset what seemed to be his most deliberate purpose. Pierre gave way, and went to Kouraguine's. He drew up at the front steps of a large house standing close to the barracks of the household cavalry, went up and into the door which stood wide open. There was no one in the hall. The place smelt of wine ; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were strewed about, and the noise of shouts and talking came from some upper room. Cards and supper were over, but the company had WAR AND PEACE. 47 not separated. Pierre, having flung off his cloak, went up into the first room where the remains of the supper were to be seen and a footman was leisurely drink- ing the sips of wine left in the glasses. Further on, in another room, above the general hubbub of laughter and shouting, the growls of a bear were audible. Eight young men were crowding eagerly round an open window; three of them were playing with a bear-cub which one was dragging about by a chain and stirring up to frighten his companions. " I will back Stevens !" cried one. " But you must not help him," said a second. " I am for Dologhow," cried a third. " Kouraguine, come and part them . . ." " No, no, Mickka; leave them alone ; it is a bet." " He must do it at one pull or it does not count !" said a fourth. '' Jacques, bring a bottle," said the master of the house at the top of his voice. He was a tall hand- some fellow who had taken his coat off, and his shirt was open on his breast. " Stay — wait a minute, gentlemen," he exclaimed. " Here is our dearly beloved Petrouchka," and he turned to Pierre. A man of middle height, with pale-blue eyes, whose calm and sober voice contrasted strangely with the vinous tones of the rest of the party, called to him from the window : " Come here — I will explain tlie betting." This was Dologhow, an officer of Semenovsky's 48 WAR AND PEACE. regiment, a well-known bully and gambler, who lived with Anatole. Pierre looked about him smiling brightly : " What is going on ? I do not miderstand." "Stop a minute — he is sober!" exclaimed Anatole. " Bring some wine ; make haste," and taking a glass from the table he went up to him. " First of all you must drink." Pierre swallowed glass after glass, but this did not prevent his listenhig to what was going on, and glanc- ing out of the corner of his eye at the company who were all tipsy and crowding round the window. Ana- tole poured out the wine for him and told him mean- while how the wager stood between Dologhow and Stevens, an Englishman in the navy. The Russian had backed himself to drink off a bottle of rum, sitting on the sill of the window of the third story with his legs hanging outside. " Here, finish it off," said Anatole, offering Pierre the last glass. " I will not let you off." " No, I don't want any more," said Pierre, pushing away his friend and going to the window. Dologhow, a young man of about five-and-twenty, was of middle height with curly hair and blue eyes. He, like all infantry officers at that time, wore no mous- tache, and his mouth, which was his most striking feature, was therefore visible. It was singularly well shaped and fine with the upper lip closing firmly on the lower one, which was a little heavy ; the comers were marked by a perpetual smile — by two perpetual smiles, as it were, one the counterpart of the other ; and this. WAR AND PEACE. 49 added to his look of steady and intelligent confidence, commanded attention. He had no fortune, and no connections; he lived with Anatole Kouraguine, spent thousands of roubles, and in spite of everything con- trived to be far more respected by their acquaintance than Anatole himself He played every kind of game, always won, and drank hugely but never lost his head. He and Kouraguine were at that time celebrities among the rakes and spendthrifts of St. Petersburg. A bottle of rum was brought in ; two servants, evi- dently rather scared by the shouts and orders that pelted them from all sides, hastened to break away the sash-frame which prevented a man from sitting on the high outer sill of the window. Anatole came up with his swaggering air; he longed to break something, and pushing away the servants he pulled the sash inwards. It was too strong to give way, but the panes flew to pieces. " Now it is your turn, Hercules," he said to Pierre. Pierre took hold of the frame, gave it a wrench, and the woodwork, which was oak, came away with a crash. " Break it all away or you might fancy I clung to it," said Dologhow. " The Englishman feels very safe, I fancy," said Anatole. " Well done !" said Pierre, keeping his eye on Do- loghow, who with the bottle of rum in his hand went towards the window where morning and evening light were beginning to meet. He sprang up on the low Hdge with the bottle in one hand. Vol. I. A 50 WAR AND PEACE. " Listen," he said, standing in the embrasure with his face to the room. Every one was silent. " I wager," — in order that the EngHshman might under- stand him he spoke French, and very badly, too, — " I wager fifty imperials — or shall I say a hundred ?" " No, fifty." "Very well, fifty imperials, that I will drink the whole of this bottle of rum, without taking my lips from the bottle; and that I will drink it there" — and he pointed to the sloping stone sill — " sitting on that, and holding on to nothing. Is that it ?" " Quite right," said the Englishman. Anatole holding Stevens by a button and looking down at him, for Stevens was a little man, repeated the terms of tlie bet in English. " And that is not all," Dologhow went on, rapping the bottle against the woodwork to command attention. "That is not all. Kouraguine — listen! If any one else does the same I will give him a hundred imperials. Do you all understand ?" The Englishman bowed, without explaining whether or no he accepted this second wager. Anatole still held him fast and trans- lated Dologhow's words in spite of Stevens' repeated nods of intelligence and assent. A young hussar who had been out of luck all the evening pulled himself up to the high window and leaned out to look down. " Oh, ho !" he muttered doubtfully, as he measured the height from the pavement with his eye. '' Silence," cried Dologhow ; he pulled back th>2 WAR AND PEACE. 5 1 young officer, who, being hampered by his spurs, leaped awkwardly into the room. The bottle was placed within reach; Dologhow slowly and carefully got astride on the window sill, and placing a hand on each side of it he seemed to be measuring the width. Then he gently seated himself, left hold, leaned a little this way and that and took up the bottle. Anatole brought a pair of candles and placed them in the bay, though it was now broad day- light. Dologhow's back as he sat in his shirt, and his crisp hair were thus lighted on either side. They all stood round the window, the Englishman in front, Pierre smiling and silent. Suddenly one of the party, alarmed and shocked, slipped forward, intending to take hold of Dologhow's shirt. "This is madness; he will kill himself!" said the man — wiser, beyond a doubt, than his companions. Anatole held him back. " Do not touch him ; you will startle him and he will fall, and what then ? Heh !" Dologhow, resting on his hands and feeling his balance, looked back. " If any one interferes again I will have hmi down there in no time; Do you hear?" he said speaking slowly and pinching his lips tight. Then he sat straight, put the bottle to his lips, and threw back his head raising his free hand to balance himself One of the servants who was clearing the table stood motion- less and never took his eyes oft" Dologhow's head. The Englishman looked another way, his mouth 52 WAR AND PEACE. tightly shut, and the Russian who had tried to prevent this insane piece of folly had flung himself on a divan in a corner of the room with his face to the wall. Pierre covered his eyes with his hand, a ghastly smile of horror and fright parting his lips. There was solemn silence. Pierre presently looked to see what was happening. Dologhow was in the same position, excepting that his head was so far thrown back that his hair rested on his shirt collar, while his right arm, holding the bottle, was slowly rising higher — higher — and trembhng a little with the strain. The bottle was evidently nearly empty. " What a long time it takes!" thought Pierre — it seemed like half-an-hour. Dologhow suddenly threw himself farther back and his arm shook more. Sitting, as he was, on a sloping ledge, this tremulous action was enough to make him slip. In fact he seemed to slip, his arm and head shook still more; he instinctively raised the other hand to clutch the woodwork, but he did not touch it. Pierre shut his eyes again, vowing that he would open them no more; but a general stir a moment after made him look up, and he saw Dologhow standing in the bay, pale but triumphant. " It is empty !" And he flung the bottle at Stevens' who caught it flying. Dologhow sprang into the room; he smelt strongly of the rum. " Capital ! well done ! That is something like a bet !" they all shouted at once. The Englishman had pulled out his purse and was WAR AND PEACE. 53 paying the bet to Dologhow who had turned silent and sullen. Pierre rushed to the window, " Who will bet that I do not do the same thing," he cried — " or even without a bet ? Quick, a bottle, and I will do it." " Pooh !" said Dologhow with a smile. "Are you mad? What next! You are not to do it — Do you hear? You — who turn giddy on a ladder?" said several. " I will do it — make haste, a bottle !" cried Pierre, thumping on the table with drunken vehemence, and he got astride on the window-sill. One of his com- panions seized his hands but Pierre was so strong that he flung him off. " No, you will never succeed like that," said Ana- tole. " Stop, I will manage him. — Listen to me, I will take the bet, but not till to-morrow — Come away now, let us be off." " All right, let us be off, Michka and I the fore- most !" He put his arms round the bear-cub and lifting it off the ground waltzed round the room with it. CHAPTER V. Prince Basil had not forgotten his promise to Prin- cess Droubetzkoi the evening of Mile. Scherer's party. The request had been preferred to the emperor and 54 WAR AND PEACE. Boris was privileged to enter the Imperial guard as sub- lieutenant in Semenovsky's regiment ; but in spite of all his mother's efforts, he was not appointed aide-de-camp to Koutouzow. Some little time after, the princess returned to Moscow, on a visit to her rich relations the Rostows, with whom she often stopped and where her darling Boris had spent the chief part of his child- hood. The regiment had left St. Petersburg on the loth of August, and Boris, who was detained at Mos- cow while his outfit was getting ready, was to join at Radzivilow. It was a high day at the Rostows'. Both mother and daughter were named Natalie and their fete, or name day, was being kept. A stream of carriages had never ceased all day from setting down a crowd of friends, at the great house in the Povarskaia street, eager to offer compliments and congratulations. The countess and her eldest daughter, a handsome young girl, were receiving them in the drawing-room, where fresh arrivals constantly poured in. The co.untess was a woman of about five and forty, and of rather an Eastern type, with a thin face and the weary look of a mother of twelve children. Her delib- erate speech and movements, which were the result of weak health, gave her a certain dignity that commanded respect. With her was the Princess Droubetzkoi, who, as one of the family, was helping to receive the com- pany and keep up the talk. The younger members of the family, who did not care for this business-like reception, were in the other WAR AND PEACE. 55 rooms. The count went forward to meet his friends, and put them into their carriages again ; and each and all he begged to return to dinner. " I am so truly obliged to you, my dear friend," he said to every one, high or low. " Thank you so much for my dear wife. You will be sure to come to dinner? I shall really be hurt if you fail. Come and bring all the family ..." He repeated the same formula to all alike, with exactly the same cordial expression, pressing their hands and bowing. After seeing off those who were departing he came back to those who had not yet taken their leave, pulled forward a chair in which he seated himself and placing his feet squarely before him and his hands on his knees, he rocked from side to side, expressing his opinions on the weather, on health and events, sometimes in Rus- sian and sometimes in French, though he spoke it badly, but always with the readiness of a man of the world. Tired as he was he was alert to bow his friends out, like a man determined to do his duty to the utmost, and repeated his invitations; and all the time he smoothed his few remaining grey hairs over his bald skull. Now and then, on his way back to the drawing- room he crossed the hall and the conservatory, and went into a large room with plaster walls Avhere tables were being laid for eighty guests. After glancing round at the servants who were bringing in the crockery and plate and folding the damask napkins, he would call a certain Dmitri Vassilievitch — a man of good family — who officiated as steward. 56 WAR AND PEACE. " I say, Mitenka, try and have every thing in good order; yes, that is right, that is right . . ." And looking with immense satisfaction at an enormous table on to which a piece was being added, he said: "The wait- ing, that is the chief thing — the waitmg, you under- stand . . . . " and he went gleefully back into the draw- ing-room. " Marie Luovna Karaguine," announced the coun- tess' footman in a deep voice as he threw open the door. " Mercy, I am dead ! Well, this is the last, — and she is so full of airs ! — Oh ! show her up," she said wearily, and she took a pinch of snuff out of a gold snuff-box with a portrait of her husband painted on it. A tall, stout woman with a haughty air, followed by a round-faced merry -looking girl, came into the room, heralded by the rustle of their long full dresses. " My dear Countess ... it is such an age . . . she has been in bed poor child ... at the Razoumosky's ball, and Countess Apraxine's ... I enjoyed it so much." These fragmentary plirases were drowned in the fuss of silk trains and of moving chairs. Then the conversation would be carried on with more or less interest till a pause offered an opportunity for rising to take leave when, after a repetition of: "I am de- lighted . . . my mother's health. . . Countess Aj^n^xine . . ." etc., etc., the ladies would make their way back to the anteroom, put on pelisses and cloaks and take their departure. The illness of old Count Besoukhow, one of the WAR AND PEACE. 57 handsomest men at the court of Catharine, was the chief subject of interest and, of course, of conversation, and even his natural son Pierre — the same who had blundered through the evening at Mile. Scherer's — was under discussion. " I really pity the poor count," said Mme. Kara- guine. " His health is wretched and to have a son who gives him so much anxiety." " Why, what anxiety can he give him ?" said the countess pretending ignorance, though she had heard it at least fifteen times. " This is the result of the education that is the fashion now a days. The young man was left to be his own master when he was abroad, and now they say he does such things at St. Petersburg that he has been ordered out of the city by the police." " Indeed ?" said the countess. " He got into bad company," said Princess Drou- betzkoi, "and with Prince Basil's son and a fellow named Dologhow, he has been playing horrible pranks. Dologhow has been packed off to the army and Besouk- how's son has been sent to Moscow. As to Anatole, his father has managed to hush up the affair; however, he has been desired to quit the capital." " But what did they doP^asked the countess. "The)5{*are perfect brigands, Dologhow especially: and he is Marie Dologhow's son — such an excellent woman ! Would you believe that tlie three had got hold of a bear-cub, I do not know where, and took it in a cwriage to some actress's house. The police tried to 58 WAR AND PEACE. arrest them, and tlien, what did they take into their heads ? They seized the poHce officer, and after tying him on the bear's back, they flung them into the Moika, the bear swimming with the man on his back." " Oh, my dear, what a fool the. man must have looked !" cried the count rolling with laughter. " But it is horrible. There is nothing to laugh at," exclaimed Mme. Karaguine though, in spite of herself, she, too, was in fits of laughing. " They had the greatest difficulty in rescuing the poor wretch .... and to think that a son of Count Be- soukhow's should find any amusement in such mad tricks ! He is said to be intelligent and well educated, too ; but this is the consequence of a foreign education. I only hope no one will receive him in spite of his fine fortune. They wanted to bring him to my house, but I decHned the honor — I have daughters." " But who says he is so rich ?" asked the countess leaning over to Mme. Karaguine and turning her back on the young ladies who immediately pretended not to hear. " The old count has none but natural children and Pierre, I think, is one of them." Mme. Karaguine threw up her hands. "There are a score of them, I believe," she said." " Princess Droubetzkoi, burning to parade her inti- macy with the minutest details of everybody's life, now threw in her word, saying in a low emphatic tone : ''The truth is that Besoukhow's reputation is noto- rious — he has so many that he has lost count of them; but Pierre is his favorite." WAR AND PEACE. 59. " And what a splendid old man he was, no longer ago than last year," said the countess. "He was the handsomest man I ever saw." " Ah ! he is very much altered now. By the way, I was going to tell you that the heir at law to all his fortune is Prince Basil, through his wife; but the old man is very fond of Pierre ; he has spent a great deal on his education and has written to the emperor about him. No one has the slightest idea which of them will come in for the money, and he may die at any moment. Lorrain has also come from St. Peters- burg. The count's fortune is something colossal — forty thousand souls* and millions of roubles in the funds, I know it for a fact, for Prince Basil himself told me. — I am myself distantly connected with old Besoukhow through his mother, and he is godfather to Boris," she added, as though she considered these facts quite un- important. " Prince Basil arrived in Moscow last evening." " He has come to make some inspection I beheve." " Oh ! but that is a mere pretext, between our- selves," said the princess. " He has come only to see Count Cyril Vladimirovitch, because he heard he was dying." " It is a dehcious story all the same," said the count, who, as the older ladies paid no heed to him, had addressed himself to the girls. " How funny the man must have looked !" And he went through a little * Serfs on estates were at that time property, saleable and devi- sable with tne land. 6o WAR AND PEACE. performance of the gestures and attitudes of the poHce- officer, chuckUng in his deep bass — the noisy, thick chuckle of a man who loves good eating and drinking, and more particularly drinking. His whole burly frame shook. " You will come back and dine ?" he added to Mme. Karaguine. The words were followed by a silence ; the countess smiled pleasantly on her visitor, making no conceal- ment of her satisfaction at seeing her rise to leave. The daughter glanced enquiringly at her mother, and arranged the folds of her skirt, when suddenly there was a noise as of several persons running across the adjoining room ; then a chair was upset, and imme- diately after a young girl of thirteen rushed into the room holding up the skirt of her muslin frock in which she had something hidden. She stopped short ; it was clear that in her headlong flight she had come further than she had intended. She was instantly followed by a college student with a purple collar to his coat, a young guardsman, a girl of about fifteen, and a little boy in a round frock with a bright rosy face. The count rose and put his arms round the first comer. " Ah ha ! Here she is !" he exclaimed. " It is her fete, too, to-day; my dear, it^is her fete." " There is a time for all things," said the countess trying to seem stern. ''You always spoil her, Elie." " How do you do, my dear; many happy returns of the day. — What a darling!" said Mme. Karaguine turning to the mother. WAR AND PEACE. 6l The little girl with her black eyes and a wide mouth, was plain rather than pretty, but to make up for it she was amazingly full of life ; her shoulders were still throbbing in her low frock from her breathless run; her black curls, all in disorder, were thrown off her face ; her bare arms were brown and thin ; she still wore long trousers trimmed with lace and had low shoes on her little feet. She was at the age, in short, when a little girl has ceased to be a child but when the child is not yet a conscious maiden. She slipped away from her father and threw herself against her mother without heeding her reproof; then, hiding her blushing face in the lace flounces of the countess's wrap, she went into fits of laughter, and began a long, incoherent story about her doll, which she took out of the skirt of her frock. " You see, it is only a doll — it is Mimi, you see. . .'* And Natacha leaning on her mother's knee laughed so infectiously that Mme. Karaguine could not lielp laugh- ing, too. " Come, come ; run away with that hideous object," said the countess, gently pushing her away. — " She is my youngest girl," she explained to her visitor. Natacha, looking up for a moment from her mother's flounces, glanced at the stranger through tears of laugh- ter, and then hid her face again. Mme. Karaguine, feeling herself bound to admire this family scene, tried to take part in it. " Tell me, dear," she said, " who is Mimi ? — Is she your little girl ?" But Natacha, not liking her conde- 62 WAR AND PEACE. scending tone, turned suddenly grave, and only looked at her without speakmg. Meanwhile the younger members of the party : Boris — the young officer, the Princess Droubetzkoi's Boris — Nicolas — the student, and the eldest son of the Rostows, Sonia — the count's niece, a girl of fifteen — and Pe- troucha, the youngest of the family, had collected in a group, making conspicuous efforts to control their glee and excitement within the bounds of propriety. Only to look at them plainly showed that in the back rooms, from whence they had so rashly appeared on the scene, the entertainment had been of a more lively character than here in the drawing-room, and that they had talked of something besides the gossip of the town, the weather, and Count and Countess Apraxine. They glanced at each other with merry meaning, and had the greatest difficulty in checking their impulse to laugh. The two lads, who had been companions all their life, were both good-looking, but as different as possi- ble. Boris was tall and fair, with regular, placid fea- tures. Nicolas had a curly head ; he was short, and his expression was frank and simple. His upper lip showed the dark shade of an infant moustache. Every look and gesture was eager and enthusiastic ; he had colored crimson when he found himself in the drawing-room and could not find a word to say. Boris, on the other hand, recovered himself at once, and said with some humor that he had had the honor of Mile. Mimi's acquaintance some five years, but that lately she had grown very old and was undoubtedly cracked ! As he WAR AND PEACE. 6^ spoke he stole a glance at Natacha who looked at her little brother : Petroucha, with his eyes almost shut, stood shaking with a convulsion of noiseless laughter, and his sister, feeling she could not control herself any longer, started up and flew out of the room as fast as her little feet could carry her. Boris did not stir : " Mamma, do not you want the carriage ordered to go out ?" he said with a smile. "Yes, go and order it," said his mother. And he left the room without hurrying himself, to follow Natacha, while the little boy, vexed at their desertion, trotted off after them. Of all the party only Nicolas and Sonia remained, with Mile. Karaguine and the Rostows' eldest daughter, who was four years older than Natacha and considered as one of the " grown-ups." Sonia was a sweet little brunette, with soft eyes and long dark lashes ; the olive tint of her complexion was more marked round her throat and on her small, slender hands, and a thick plait of black hair was bound twice round her head. The smooth grace of her movements, and her softness and roundness generally, with a rather shy manner, reminded one of a kitten growing up into a beautiful cat. She smiled, to look as if she took an interest in the conversation ; but her eyes, which, under their silky lashes, constantly stole a glance at the ^student cousin who was soon to be off to his regiment, so frankly expressed the adoring admiration peculiar to very young girls, that her smile could deceive no one. It was quite evident that though the kitten had curled 64 WAR AND PEACE. itself up for a moment the instant she was out of the drawing-room after Boris and Natacha she would jump and play again with this charming cousin: "Yes, my dear," said the count, pointing to Nic- olas, " his friend Boris has been appointed to the Guards and he insists on going with him to join the army- — he will desert me, and leave college, and be a soldier — and to think that a place in the Archives is waiting for him ! That is what I call devoted." "And war is declared they say." "They said so long since, and they will say so again, and then we shall hear no more of it. — Yes, my dear, real devotion, if I know what friendship means. He is going into the Hussars." Mme. Karaguine, not knowing what to say, nodded assent. "It is not out of friendship at all!" exclaimed Nic- olas, turning crimson and defending himself as if he were accused of a crime. He looked at his cousin and at Mile. Karaguine who both seemed to approve. " General Pavlograd is to dine with us to-night ; he is here on leave and will take Nicolas back with him. What can I say ?" and the count shrugged his shoulders and tried to take the matter lightly, though it had in fact occasioned him no small pain. " I have told you, Papa, again and again, that if you forbid my going, I will stay. But I cannot be anything but a soldier I know ; for a diplomatist or an official is bound to conceal his opinions and feelings, and I do not know how — " and he sent a killing glance WAR AND PEACE. 65 at the young ladies, while the httle kitten kept her eyes fixed on his and seemed only to be waiting for an oppor- tunity to be at her tricks and games. "Very good, very good," said the count. "He fires up at once ! Bonaparte has turned all their heads, and they all want to find out how, fiom being a lieu- tenant he has become an Emperor. Well, well. I wish them good-luck," he added not noticing Mme. Kara- guine's scornful smile. Then they began to talk of Napoleon, and Julie Karaguine turned to Nicolas Rostow : "I am sorry you were not at the Argharows' on Thursday — I was so dull without you," she murmured softly. The young man, greatly flattered, went closer to her, and they carried on a coquettish dialogue " aside," he entirely forgetting Sonia, while she, poor child, scar- let and quivering with jealousy, tried to force a smile. In the middle of this he turned to look at her, and Sonia, flashing a look of love and anger out of her dark eyes, walked out of the room, with difficulty restraining her tears. Nicolas suddenly ceased his lively flirtation, and availing himself of the first favorable interruption, he went off in search of her, visibly disturbed. "The young folks' secrets are kept in a glass case," said Princess Droubetzkoi, looking after them. "Cousins are danj^rous neighbors." "Yes," s-aid the countess, as all the light and life of the party finally disappeared. And then she went on V0I. I.